Hobby Weekender 23/02/2019 – Here we go!

[evilstu 15298xp 2]

Welcome All to another Hobby Weekender! As per tradition started generations ago, and handed down from wise elders, the intro blurb is shamelessly cut and paste below once again and possibly for all time…:

To the uninitiated, this is a virtual hobby hangout here on the forum. It is something fun and silly with a little more ‘oomph’. It’s not just show and tell with your models. Its chatting, getting to know one another, community building. Think of it as a sort of club like hobby session. Everyone is welcome, of course, and there are a few rules to abide by. Let it go as OT as you like with chatting with folks. BoW/OTT is a special, unique community, and this little weekly thread is a tradition on these forums. Though not for everyone, if you are still reading and keen, then it is for you. If not, best click out.

We do a few things on this thread that usually lasts from Friday or Saturday til about Wednesday or Thursday. My say is final in this silly little corner of the internet. Fear not, for this is your safe place against the outside world of flame wars, trolling and all that other crap.

(1) Make a pledge for the weekend. It can be painting, assembly, priming, converting, background writing, terrain, you name it. Just gotta be relevant to hobbying or gaming.

(2) Chat with people. Be friendly. Do get to know one another, be kind, provide positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. Do not post up your real name, credit card, bank details or home address info.

(3) I will list out questions. Answer them. Longer answers = more points. Also, points are being assigned to something else as it confused some folk for a while.

(4) Awards will be given out at the end of the thread and you shall be awarded XP, added to your account profile by the wonderful @lancorz . Think of him as the ever vigilant Batman of the forums who keeps a careful eye on the status quo, but also acts in a way, like Alfred; with a calm disposition and the attentive nature of a concierge.

(5) Scottish Pub Law rules: no discussion of religion or politics**. Keep it clean. Behave. Be nice, be kind. Walk away if you get angry. Don’t be a dick.

Also there are bonuses for the following ‘Achievements’:
· Most Valuable Player (most engaged with topic)
· Fire Starter (topic starter, encourages the member circulation)
· Hobby Champ (most hobby over the weekend)
· Meme Lord (ryhmes, funnies & memes)
· Pun-Tertainment (best pun)
· Brush Licker (painting & terrain)
· Headliner DJ (most eclectic music)
· Armchair Commander (weekend battle reports)
· Community Usher (helpful & engaged)
· Storyteller (weekly discussion & story)

Note: All points are awarded in fictional currencies… sometimes

To get the conversation started, this week’s questions!

1. Regale us with an anecdote from a game where you really hadn’t earned the win but it was handed to you by a lucky card or die roll.

2. What is one instance where a hobby company has come through with an idea or concept that just blew you away?

3. Transformers the Miniatures Game – Could it ever work? Why or why not? Or what about He-man or She-ra or Knight rider or the A-Team or Thundercats? (or any of the other 80’s IP’s that haven’t yet been mined…).

[Anonymous 0xp 4]

Haven’t taken part in a while, but those of a certain vintage will remember me building lots of tanks, not painting very much and having great taste in heavy metal . The only thing different is I’ve ran out of tank kits… Anyhow, going to make a very conscious effort to make an effort and take part more.

My pledge

Well, one thing is different.  I have moved house, so I have now a hobby shed, rather than a hobby room and a bedroom I stored everything.  Shed used to be where my dad and myself had a train set.  So having taken the train set down, I have been moving and storing all my hobby stuff plus lots of other crap from the house move.  My hobby this weekend will be getting the shed sorted.  I might even take pictures when I have it done (which given I can barely get in the door of the shed at the moment, might be in a very future weekender 🙂

Questions

1. The first thing I thought of was a hand I played in online poker many, many years ago (not hobby related but it has been a while since I have played a game of anything).  It was at a very low stake… but I had the King, Jack of Hearts… flop comes down… 9 Hearts, 10, Hearts, Jack Spades… 4 people in hand, one person put in a raise, everyone calls.  I think the turn was the Jack of Diamonds… there is a raise, I go all in (probably wrong mathematically) and everyone else calls… I know I am beaten… only one card can save me…river was the Queen of Hearts… Straight flush… go baby… I won about $23 dollars, which was about 5 or 6 buysins at the table…  Other people had the nut flush, a fullhouse, a straight… Chances of a straight flush is something like 0.003% or something.  Can’t remember all the exact details but it is the only straight flush I ever got, very close to a Royal Flush.

2. Not one instance, but two companies I am massive fans of is Sarrisa Precision and 4Ground.  They continually blow me away with what you can do with MDF (and sometimes a piece of card).  Ruins, trains, buses.  Love them both!

3. I’m not that familiar with Transformers but I don’t see why it couldn’t work as a wargame (there is already a Robotech game, I think).  You’d need two models for each character e.g.  BumbleBee in car mode and in Transformer mode.  Would be interesting but the lack of factions would probably hurt it in the long run with good guys v bad guys (though x-wing has been ok with 3 factions). The licence might be prohibitive though.

Knightrider would be a hard one to make interesting as a miniatures game. Same with shows like Airwolf and StreetHawk.  Would be fun computer games though.  You could play a lot of TV shows with 7TV.  I do have some A-team and Ghostbusters look-a-like models.

He-man and Thundercats might be fun, and I want a Thundertank!!!!  Make it so!

Music
I’ve mentioned trains twice so…

[sundancer 42908xp 4]

1. Regale us with an anecdote from a game where you really hadn’t earned the win but it was handed to you by a lucky card or die roll.

Can’t Literally never happened to me. Not that I could recall at least and I’m getting old 😉

2. What is one instance where a hobby company has come through with an idea or concept that just blew you away?

Even if today nobody feels like it but when FFG released X-Wing I was all like “flying fighters killing other fliers? THIS IS SO AWESOME!” This was 6 years ago and the market wasn’t so saturated with Star Wars so the hype was more understandable. The opposite happened to me when Wizkids closed doors and had to let go of the Star Wars licence for Star Wars Pocketmodels. I collected the shit out of that game. Still have a large collection of that game.

3. Transformers the Miniatures Game – Could it ever work? Why or why not? Or what about He-man or She-ra or Knight rider or the A-Team or Thundercats? (or any of the other 80’s IP’s that haven’t yet been mined…).

Of course it could if the rules fit the universe. At Hamburger Tactica there was a guy with a home brew system for He-Man with hand picket minis to fit the universe.

In this picture: She-Ra in right, He-Man on Battlecat exiting castle Greyskull.

Important is that the universe the game is set in feels “true” to the feeling those cartoons conveyed.

[rayzryrParticipant 22010xp 3]

Hey all!

After a week’s hiatus to deal with some real world stuff, this week I need some hobby time to chill.

The pledge for this week will be working on the Dark Angels. I had time on Friday to do a little work on them. I’m looking forward to getting them done though. ?

 

 

Hmm let’s see…

1.
There was a time… I was playing chess with my mate David. He was much better at the game than I. He was better at most of the games we played, 40k, Necromunda… etc etc. (Actually I was usually better at Blood Bowl) Anyway!

We’re playing chess, and both of us have almost nothing left on the board. I was down to my King and one other piece. A bishop or a rook, maybe a knight. He was similar, his King, another one and his Queen. My queen had long since been taken.

I really should have conceded hehehe… but I wanted him to get a proper check-mate. I was probably going to concede in a turn or two anyway.

You see, the game had turned into to some kind of Benny Hill chase around scenario…

Both of our Kings had been drawn to near the middle of the board, and David was chasing my King down with his Queen. He’d make a move, check. I’d move my King. He’d move the Queen, check. I’d move my King. My King was in the process of doing a lap around his King. It was only a matter of a few turns until I’d run into the other piece he still had and I was done. I was having fun annoying David (since he nearly always won) and knowing I was done soon.

Until!

I looked at he state of the board, the positions of the five remaining pieces we had between us…

With each single turn step I had accidentally drawn David’s defence away from his King, then moved my own King out of the path of attack of my own remaining piece. My knight/rook/bishop was free to attack David’s King next turn, was safe from attack from his Queen and his other piece. Not only that, but the positioning of the remaining pieces meant that David couldn’t move his own King to a safe location…

I had accidentally manoeuvred a check-mate!!! ???

David was at first incredulous, then disbelieving, then disgusted! ??? I knew it for what it was straight away: a cheesy, unearned win hahaha! We never did play chess again, and he continued to kick my arse in 40k ?

To this day, I do believe it is the Only time I have won a game of chess…

 

2.

There’s a few I’d say…

Kingdom Death as a whole: the minis are great, it’s a tough challenging game, it was the first tabletop game I came across that really facilitated solo play.

Twisted have done some fantastic work too. Taking known characters and putting a new spin on them isn’t that ground breaking, but the minis they’ve commissioned! Amazing! The spin they put on those characters is what wows me. Especially the preview recently of the Tin Man!

 

3.

I was thinking about Transformers recently-ish… how would it go on to tabletop? Dual minis is one option, but I kind of feel like that takes the most fun part of the Transformer toy out of the equation: the transforming!

What about transforming minis? Using the sizing of the mini-bots of old, (I’m thinking original Bumblebee/Warpath/ Rumble/ Ravage size) or maybe a little bigger. Using roughly consistent scale, so that vehicles look right next to each other, perhaps around Matchbox/Hot wheel scale, perhaps using a system like Gaslands?

By transforming  to Bot mode the stats change to move slower, but they’re more accurate with weapons, can scale buildings, can grapple in combat or throw nearby scenery/cars etc?

With the potential launch of the Transformers/Mask/ GI Joe etc cinematic universe, there’s potential to open up other factions/ allies etc. Autobots with MASK allies vs a Cobra incursion could be fun…

He-man, Thundercats etc can definitely work, but again limited factions. Unless it’s a coop game against an AI or scenarios? I feel that would be more fun.

 

Ah, I may have rambled a bit there… your combination of questions really got the grey matter going tonight @evilstu

Sunday night I’ll probably pick up the brush, bring in some tunes, and respond to my fellow participants! Have fun all!

[limburger 21676xp 3]

Happy Hobby time folks 🙂

> 1. Regale us with an anecdote from a game where you really hadn’t earned the win but it was handed to you by a lucky card or die roll.

*eh* that would mean I had to win something at all …

> 2. What is one instance where a hobby company has come through with an idea or concept that just blew you away?

Dropfleet Commander

A game set in space that did several good things :

• fights happen at a logical location : next to the planet
• it respects the size of space
• not too technical
• great miniatures

The link to their Dropzone commander was an interesting aspect as well.

 

3. Transformers the Miniatures Game – Could it ever work?

Why not ?
I think the tricky part is picking a scale that does justice to the transformers while still allowing their vehicle modes to be useful.

I was thinking of the A-team recently … it would be kind of cool to see it done with a bit more realism.
The only problem is that their DIY inventions are unlikely to work in a realistic setting, but it wouldn’t be the same if they couldn’t use improvised weapons & vehicles either.

Pledge wise I think I will look at creating a list for AoS. The Gloomspite Gitz look so cool that I want to build them.

[dawfydd 11923xp 4]

Hi guys, apologies for not engaging last week, just wasn’t feeling up to it I’m afraid. But I’m about to start a week off and have a load of hobby-stuff I want to try to work through 🙂

So haven’t done any painting in the last week and a bit, but decided to play around with some kit building (I know, quell-surprise!), starting with putting Predator on the DVD and knocking together a Catachan Company Commander and a squad of infantry.Gods do I wish GW had redone the basic jungle Fighter kit when they did the Command & Heavy Weapon kits…..

This morning threw together another 5 Skyclaws,  as I really dig having two 15-man squads of Space Marines to throw at opponents – 1 of Bloodclaws and 1 of Skyclaws 😉

And finally digging through the sprues in the pile found this chap. I  have the Death Guard portion of Conquest slowly accumulating, and the ltd Noise Marine. Perhaps it’s worth looking at the Lost & the Damned forces of the Traitor Legions later in the year???

And  to the questions – I’ll stick to number 3: Whilst I would LOVE a TF miniatures game (and there was a chap  on Facebook who was working on the concept with prototype minis but he got shut down when he approached Hasbro with the idea) , but I  suspect the need for multiple minis for the different alt-modes would be somewhat prohibative. On the other hand, if it was pitched as a skirmish game, say no more than 10 models, then that should make it more feasible. I think the biggest hurdle would be the fact you  would be dealing with forces almost completely made of characters. There is some  scope for “grunts” in the form of Decepticon Seekers, Vehicons, Insections and Autobot Auto-troopers, but as they normally share a body-type with established characters it would be reliant on there being ways to differentiate them beyond just paint. No-one wants a  force of Starscream look-a-likes all with the same pose. On the flipside there is a LOT of scope for rules variety given the sheer number of sub-factions in  the lore – Dinobots, Predacons, Wreckers, Stunticons, Aerialbots, the DJD, Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord for example –  offer options for themed forces orbonuses for having all of a specific team on the field (Grimlock and the Dinobots for example putting the fear of Primus into opposing ‘Cons when on the field). I could easily see a stripped down version of the Infinity rules forming a basis for a game that simulates the crazy action of the Robots In Disguise,perhaps with the lethality of weapons toned down?

And thinking about it, if you start to account for the different iterations of the franchise, and even the time frames the stories can take place over (this is a franchise where the core two factions are supposed to have been at war for millions of years, and a good portion of the species predates the wars start…). Beyond G1 you could easily build rules forBeastWars, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, the Bayverse, Animated, Prime, RiD and the IDW-verse, that could work as their own thing or be  merged together (which is itself a fluffy option given a portion of the Lore where a resurrected, dimension-hopping Unicron forces the rebirth of Optimus Primal who gathers warriors from across time and space to stop him)…..

[blinky465 17027xp 4]

1. Still waiting for it to happen. I could bore you to tears with “bad beats” playing Texas Hold’em Poker but I’m sure that’s not the kind of game you were asking about 😉

2. Battle Systems. Looks great, simple, lightweight. Love it!
What more to say – just stunning.

3. After learning about my plastic-soldiers hobby, the guy at my local coffee shop told me he felt emboldened to buy some Pokemon cards and join a game at Dice Saloon in Brighton – a game he hadn’t played since the 90s. I’ve never played, but understand that it involves characters that can change, and gain different skills; playing combinations of cards to turn one character into another is part of the strategy of the game, apparently. A Transformers tabletop game with some kind of reason for transforming (that adds to the gameplay rather than just as a gimmick) would be pretty sweet. Two models per character isn’t a problem for me – it’s an abstract tabletop game, they don’t need to actually transform!

I’d LOVE some kind of He-Man tabletop game; the scratch-build community could really get behind that one – just imagine how cool a tabletop Castle Greyskull could be! Someone on Etsy is selling 32mm minis (https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/567355200/he-man-32mm-pewter-miniature) I think they’re by a company called Quest Miniatures? Man-at-Arms looks great. Some of the others, not so much… I’ve seen some nice conversions online recently, but my Google-fu is letting me down this afternoon.
I’d love the full set of those minis, but they’re far too spendy for me to get past the wife (these examples look amazing, with their garish 80s-style colour schemes: http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/showthread.php?272517-WK-s-30mm-scale-MOTU-collection and show someone with a real passion for the minis).

Heresy also have some minis which look like they’d convert relatively easily – and a few that are absolutely not MOTU rip-offs at all (http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=14)

As for rules…? Who needs rules when you’ve such cool looking miniatures?!

[EDIT: looking through the BoW website, these very miniatures featured about 18 months ago! https://www.beastsofwar.com/news/power-heman-miniature-collection/)

[mageParticipant 20596xp 2]

Hey ho peepoles

 

Quick message as I was working a twelve hour day today and have stuff on after work. My plan is to finish refurbishing my friend’s carousel, finish five new Moonclan Grot Squids for use with Mordheim, and I will add to the pledge after that. How is everyone doing?

 

Thanks to @evilstu for hosting this weekend

[limburger 21676xp 3]

I noticed at a local GW shop that they had books for free.

Something to do with a black library weekend ?

//

Named characters aren’t odd in multiplayer video games like Overwatch and Apex Legends (the lastet ‘battle royale’ style game).
As such a Transformers game doesn’t have to feature nameless grunts, unless it’s humans vs evil transformers.

There was a recent videogame called “Transformers: Devastation”  :

//

I made a separate topic for my Gitz list, because I need a bit of help making sense of list building in AoS and it might be useful to other AoS newbies like me :

Moonspite Gitz army list help

 

[tuffyears 23171xp 2]

Testing posting images on imgur

[evilstu 15298xp 2]

Ok, so first up apologies for the late start, had issues logging into the site yesterday. Gremlins seem to have scurried off now though 🙂

@robert welcome back! Ah, real life box Tetris. It’s sort of fun in that you discover things you had forgotten about, but also frustrating when you can’t find the thing that you are looking for 6 months later. Best of luck with it all 🙂 Poker counts as hobby 🙂 Wow, nice hand! I hear you on the terrain front. I have a serious terrain addiction – Kickstarter is enabling nme at the moment… So many great companies churning things out at the moment. Had forgotten about Airwolf – could maybe see that being playable if Team Yankee goes a bit Konflict ’47… yes You’d probably need multiple sculpts for each gaming piece, although some of the classic ones that ‘mass shift’ might be a bit redundant but could maybe provide an in-game buff to other models? 40 gold coins for pledge and responses.

@sundancer yes I know what you mean about X-Wing. Star Wars licence and awesome minis aside, it is genuinely a well designed game. Even the token components are of a really high quality. Ha! missed the He-man table in the photos you showed last week. That’s awesome! 30 gold coins for question responses.

@rayzryr welcome back 🙂 Great chess story! That must have been hilarious. I really need to take a proper look at Twisted. Every time I see the minis or terrain I’m really impressed, but I no little to nothing about the game. And yes, Kingdom death, good call. Playing a Transformers game with old smaller scale toys/collectibles could also work nicely. Best of luck pushing on with the DA’s. 40 gold coins for pledge and responses.

@limburger really liked the look of Dropfleet, and the way it integrated into DZC was nice too. Sort of makes me wish for a similar quality product for the Battletech universe. Although to be fair I think most of the BT gamers form back in the day would have moved on to other games systems now so getting a player base to support would probably not be an easy task. Any A-team game would definitely need a card or mechanism to represent a build montage… Gitz you say? Can’t blame you, some of those new models do have a chaotic charm that goes back to the much older WHFB aesthetic 🙂 40 gold coins for pledge and responses.

@dawfydd congrats on the week off! pro tip, don’t overcommit on your hobby pledge – speaking from recent experience on this one ;-P Nice conversions! And yes, Predator. I keep forgetting how good that film actually is…

Wow, detailed response on 3. yes I guess the first hurdle would actually be settling on a time period/generation/iteration to set the game in. I guess I’d probably default to G1 personally but thinking it through the game might be a lot more believable (at least from the inclusion of ‘grunts’) if set on Cybertron. Of course that would mean most of the iconic designs wouldn’t strictly make sense given the timeline… 30 gold coins for hobby pledge and detailed response on #3.

@blinky465 ah yes, Battlesystems. And so nice that it can all integrate to some degree. I really need to find an excuse to game with my set more often… Oooh, MOTU minis, I might need to add another possible project to the list…

https://i0.wp.com/www.rowsdowr.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/she_ra_____will_kick_your_ass______by_nebezial-d55wmsu.jpg

30 gold coins for responses.

@mage hope you are tracking OK. 10 gold coins for the pledge.

@tuffyears nice to see you ‘carrion’ with the box set to such a high standard 😛 OK, I’ll show myself out… 20 gold coins for hobby progress.

[tuffyears 23171xp 4]

More from tuffyears paint works new studio

[mageParticipant 20596xp 3]

Hey guys! I have a three hour window with sleeping in and then trying to go back to bed before a twelve hour night shift. I will post answers to questions and my own hobby progress for now and later (since time is a sort of limited commodity with the way my life works at certain times and work) I will give friendly chat and feedback for other posters. At first glance though there is some awesome stuff here!

At least tomorrow morning I am off for two days, including that day.

1. Regale us with an anecdote from a game where you really hadn’t earned the win but it was handed to you by a lucky card or die roll.

It was the first round of a 40k tournament years ago, before my son was born. I had a Chaos Space Marine army with a mix. The idea of the army was that they were an Emperor’s Children warband who had access to a few starships and wore colours similar to their Legion days. Furthermore, I put some tyranid trophies on them and reasoned they were veterans of fighting tyranids. Surely chaos marines fight more than just imperialist pigdogs right?

The army at the time had a Chaos Lord of Slaanesh in Terminator armour, a squad of Chaos Marines with the mark of slaanesh and meltaguns in a rhino, a squad of khorne berserkers in a rhino, a squad of Plague Marines in a rhino, some Obliterators, and Terminators with the mark of slaanesh (and I think a squad of thousand sons in a rhino that I left at home for this game as I was Elites heavy for this edition).

The reasoning behind the force was that the Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch worshippers wore one piece of their armour in purple as a sign of deference to the Chaos Lord (be it a loin cloth, shoulder pad or knee plate). The idea was that these guys were either rejects, renegades or outlaws from their own original warbands who had cheesed off the wrong person or just cut a little bit too much off the top for themselves. Due to this they needed transport off world and across space so they threw their lot in with this warband.

The first game of the tournament was objectives with a Plague Marine heavy army. I never played against Chaos Marines much at the time, and this guy knew his list, knew the rules better, and had a solid army that worked well. Moreso than mine. It was a fun game, really fun, especially when a 40k tournament can be so… well overly competitive.

Against the odds though I held my own and took down part of his army piecemeal. The fact that he fluffed some Feel no pain rolls helped.

The mission had random game length and we were tying for objectives, resorting to short range firefights in the middle of the board and resorting to close combat here and there for board control and denial.

It was then my turn, cant remember whose player turn it would end on as it was years ago, but it was random game length. My squad of plague marines, who were newly painted and debuted for the first time at this tournament, were in a rhino from a previous turn. They rushed out the table and burst out of it on top of the objective and held it the end of the turn.

The game ended at turn five.

Now, I know I won, and it was satisfying and glad I did. It was a gamble and a great game? Do I feel I didn’t deserve it, well… no I kind of do feel I did. But did I earn it? Probably not, but it was very poxie!

2. What is one instance where a hobby company has come through with an idea or concept that just blew you away?

Honestly, the Kharadron Overlords and some of the recent new stuff with GW. I know people have their feelings about GW and what they do and how they operate, but I digress. If you look at WHFB it was belvoed and classic, but man everything was derivative of something: Tolkien, Lieber, Lovecraft to a degree, Moorcock, myth, history, folklore and so on and such. However when GW do do their own thing and really get creative and come up with something original, well they do a good job and hit it out of the park: Genestealer cults, Skaven, Kharadron Overlords, Idoneth Deepkin, etc etc.

Especially the Overlords: steampunk, armoured, gun wielding, non-tolkien, airship riding dwarfs7

A new race descends on the Mortal Realms

Tell me that doesen’t give you the shivers?

3. Transformers the Miniatures Game – Could it ever work? Why or why not? Or what about He-man or She-ra or Knight rider or the A-Team or Thundercats? (or any of the other 80’s IP’s that haven’t yet been mined…).

Oh yes, it could, and I will come back to this one as I could write a ream about it, and quite frankly, I’ve spent too long of my three hour window on this!

Ok, gonna directly upload the Mordheim Ogre I finished…

[mageParticipant 20596xp 3]

[mageParticipant 20596xp 4]

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