Vacation gaming 2013!

We just returned from our annual trip to Myrtle Beach. Which means I get to play a bunch of board games with my brother Dan. Not pictured are the rounds we played of Dungeon Roll and Grave Robbers from Outer Space at the hotel we spend a night in on the way down. Fun light games good for an evening after spending all day in the van.  

The first game we played at the beach house was RUNEWARS (Not pictured) I can't believe I didn't take pics of this one. Great game. I really have to pull this one out again for a game night. It has a really epic fantasy theme. Good stuff. 

Second game at the beach house was RISK 2210. I love most incarnations of RISK. I know a lot of people scoff at the game, but it's simple and fun and the different variations always add some fun flavor. 

 It was a good time, especially because I wiped the floor with Dan. 

 I brought down the rules for War of the Ring and Dan read them. It took him the whole day, but by about 11pm we started playing. The rulebook for this one is a brute. Dan did a really good job of explaining the game despite how involved it is. 

 We got about 3 turns in and I honestly felt like I was starting to get the rhythm of how the game was supposed to work. Then out of nowhere Dan stands up and says he didn't think we were playing the game right and he quit. I still don't know what happened there. It was fun while it lasted. 

 Verdict is still out on this game for me. It tries to do a lot of things and I have about 3 other big epic fantasy games in this genre so I don't know if I'll hold onto this one or not. I loved the way Runewars played. 

 Up next was Touch of Evil. The first round we played with one board against the Necromancer. 

The way the zombies work for him sort of broke up our ability to encounter Corner Locations. I think those locations are what make the game so fun by helping to create the narrative. In this one we spent too much time trying to keep zombies out out town. 

 We played a second round of Touch of Evil with all three maps and we squared off against the Ghost ship.  

 This one was a lot more fun. We were able to do a lot more exploring and building up our characters. It was very cool. I'll say it again, Touch of Evil is one of my favorite board games. It's just always a great time and it oozes flavor and theme. It was a perfect game for Halloween week. The Flying Frog guys have never made a game I didn't like. I'm crazy excited about their new Kickstarter project, Shadows of Brimstone. The game and the theme both look awesome. Take a look http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1034852783/shadows-of-brimstone?ref=card

 Last game of the week we got in was Ticket to Ride. The girls played this one with us. It's a good game.....no zombie pirates though, so kind of lame ;o)

And this is the new Yoda pipe I bought at the comic shop inside Myrtle Beach Mall. It's a pipe so awesome it makes me want to fill my lungs with carcinogens. 

X-Wing! Now with more angles!

I've wanted for a long time to make my X-Wing fighters able to have a more dynamic look. There's a company that makes special magnetic engineered flight stands to do this but they are ridiculously cost prohibitive. After searching the interwebs I found this blog: http://penandlead.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/x-wing-customizable-magnetic-pivoting-flight-stand/

This guy gives a really nice tutorial on how to make the fighters look like they're in a dog fight by using BB's and Neodymium magnets to modify the X-wing flight stands. Below are my results. I'm pretty happy with it. 

 The TIE Advanced and the Y-Wings I've found are the fighters whose weight is a little more off balance than the others. The regular TIE fighter is a little top heavy as well. 

 The magnets I bought are a little larger diameter than the ones on the blog, and I found that I needed to stick two of them together to get the magnetic pull I needed to keep the ships a little more stable. 

 I clipped off the pin and drilled out a little hole in the post to allow the BB something to sit on. I roughed up the contact surfaces of the BB and the magnets with a file to give a little more friction to the contact. 

 I actually bought ring magnets for this project as was suggested in one of the posts on the blog. This gave a lot more grip between the ship and the magnets and prevents slipping. 

Regular old BB's, make sure they are steel so the magnets will stick. 

More Zombie Stuff....Sorry Keith.

Here's another group of Zombie Hunters/SWAT guys that I got painted. Some of them had to end with a shiny gloss finish. I had some clouding issues with humidity trying to dull coat them. It's a mix of miniatures, some Recreational Conflict, Foundry and Reaper for good measure. They're standing in front of the new fence barriers I built this week. 

 Above are a custom made Michael Myers I did with the Wargames Factory Survivor kit along with a Heroclix re-touch. 

 These guys are the zombies that Eureka Minis makes. I was trying to paint them up to resemble the Tarman Zombie from Return of the Living dead. They are okay, but not quite the look I wanted. It's a lot of really juicy textures and layers going on and I just don't have the chops for it. But they're zombies so they're fine. 

This and That.....

Here some odds and ends I got done. Mostly stuff that I'd like to use in Zombie/Post Apocalyptic games. 

 First, for the longest time I've wanted Jersey barriers for my table but I'm kind of stingy with certain things. I would look at some of the resin ones out there where you get like 4 for $10 and just couldn't do it. It seemed like something I should be able to make. So when I came into some 3/4 inch foam core and noticed the regular foam core rabbit cutter pieces from another project sitting on the table I came up with these, in regular and ugly style. 

 Be prepared....for certain doom.

 I don't usually take front and back photos butt.....yeah. 

 More Survivors, including my first ginger Zombie fighter.

 Some Heroclx/Horrorclix repaints. 

Human skin wearin' guy and Killer Santa. 

Now I'm gonna show you what I already know.

This is the result of some sculpting putty and chopping up A LOT of Horrorclix and various other bits from the bits box. I eventually want to do rules for "The Thing" where a team of specialists will travel to Antarctica to investigate the disappearance of the weather station. I may change it to oil drilling camp. We'll see. 

 Here are the small creatures, cannon fodder. 

 Humans transforming

 This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. I don't even know what angle to shoot him from. 

 I had the "awesome" idea to have a Thing infected polar bear, because I had this random bear miniature with a saddle sculpted to it. I had no idea what I'd ever use that for....About halfway through sculpting I remembered that polar bears lived in the NORTH pole and that I am moron. Plus, the dang thing just looks ridiculous. 

Some dog minis I just painted up as huskies.  

  Mutating Huskies