Another successful Reboot!

Yesterday I finally found the time to watch the Judge Dredd remake. And it was awesome!

Sooooo much better than the original.

It's a great, straight forward action movie, with good pacing and good actors. Great visuals, especially in the scenes involving the slo-mo drug. But, oh boy, it is bloody! Nothing for the visually squeamish. Lots of blood and gore.

Lena Headey makes for a great villain, Karl Urban is a lot more badass as Judge Dredd than Stallone was, since he does not overact so much. Olivia Thirlby makes for a infinitely cuter and infinitely less annoying sidekick than Rob Schneider. She kicks nearly as much ass as Dredd himself. (say that last part aloud) Then she basically mind rapes one of the baddies.

Only weakness would be the story. It is a bit too straight forward and lacks twists you don't see coming a mile away. But it never really feels forced, so it's not that bad either.

Final verdict: 8/10 years Iso-cube for exaggerated coolness!

I am the law!

Fenris

Tomb Raider Reboot is awesome!

I just finished playing through the new Tomb Raider. It was a blast. Great story, enjoyable game play awesome graphics and really good pacing. Only minor nitpick I have is that Lara went quite fast from vulnerable young archaeologist to Katniss Everdeen as trained by Captain Price. But that's something I'm willing to overlook, since Ms. Croft went from a bland action-girl with big boobs to an actual character.

Not only Lara got her origin story, but also her two iconic pistols. Which she used to blow away the big Bad, after using a bow most of the game.

I have to confess, I have played Tomb Raider 1-4, but never finished one of them. I watched the movie, though, which had cool action scenes. (that's probably the only good thing you can say about it)
I still have Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Legend and Underworld lying around in my Steam account and will probably play those one day.

In a funny coincidence, Freebooter Miniatures revealed a new Mercenary a few weeks ago. Clara Cadora, who is blatantly inspired by Lara Croft. Sadly she is more along the lines of the old Lara, slinging around two huge pistols, while wearing only little more than most of the Freebooter Amazons.

Here's to hoping there are more Tomb Raider titles like this along the way.


I's like to try archery some time
Fenris

Giantesses and Spanish Art

Monday this week I managed to snag Guild Wars 2 of ebay for cheap and have been leveling a female Norn guardian (think giantess valkyrie). She is now level 9 and kicking a lot of butt. I never really got into Guild Wars 1, but found part 2 very enjoyable during the weekend trial.

I just received the Infinity Artbook I preordered and it is awesome! Chock full of full color art and concept drawings from the spaniards at Corvus Belli. Along with it came ten full color DIN A4 prints I originally planned to hang on my wall. But looking at them now, I might have to frame them, so they don't take damage.
The book also has revitalized my interest in my Caledonian Highlander Army. I have researched tartans since they are all wearing kilts and they are bloody hard to paint.

Also I am still listening at least once a week to the newest Amon Amarth Album. Favorite songs: Shape Shifter, We shall destroy and Snake Eyes


Thinking about buying a kilt
Fenris

A very suspicious looking German Politician (at least to whovians)

Every time I ride my bike to work I see this sign:

and the guy on the right really reminds me of this guy:

So, we might have need of a madman in a blue box some time after September the 22nd.

To explain this to people who have not watched Doctor Who. The second guy is the Master. In the series he is a recurring enemy of the Doctor, being the only other Timelord to have survived the destruction of Gallifrey. He once tried to take over our world by first becoming Britain's prime minister and then summoning his allies, the Toclafane (not exactly aliens) through a temporal rift. (Dr Who 3.11/12/13 Utopia/ The Sound of Drums/ The last of the Timelords)
Then later on he tried to "resurrect" Gallifrey and the Timelords at the expense of annihilating earth. He was stopped by the Doctor and mortally wounded. (4.17/18 The End of Time I+II)
John Simm did a great Job playing the Master as a charismatic, but insane villain.


I believe in the man from Gallifrey
Fenris

(Don't) fear the Reaper

And I horribly failed at painting a mini each week. Great. On the positive side I am now training as a professional computer nerd, so that's something.

Also, I am currently working on a conversion for Asphyxious the Hellbringer heavily inspired by Darksiders 2 and the new Diablo 3 trailer. Acording to his feat "the restless souls of the slaughtered rise only to be harvested and fuel the Hellbringers power." So I decided to make him look like the Reaper. (Not the one from Mass Effect)

 Progress after some cutting and sculpting

What I am going for:

Darksiders 2: This is the good guy. Yes, really!

The guy I mean appears at 1:56. He's definitely not the good guy. But, what's interesting is that apparently his motives are pure or the sword wouldn't let him do that.

Now I'm wondering how to do the smoky wings. Or find some suitably bony wings. And if I will have to play the Diablo expansion. I mean they include the exact class for me, the Crusader. A heavily armored shield-bearing knight that batters his enemies with a flail.

This might also make a great color scheme for the Protectorate

Seriously, if I had to go into battle, rest assured I'd bring the biggest portable wall I could find and I have a soft spot for zealots in videogames. They are fun to roleplay, too.

The Templar is my homie

Fenris

Miniature of the Week (1-8.07.2013) - Bakunin Moderator

Since I don't subscribe to the superstition that you'll die when you run out of miniatures to paint, I actually try to get my small pewter mountain painted. And I thought it might be a good idea to get one mini painted each week.

This is the first mini to get under my brush: A Bakunin Moderator from Corvus Belli. Basically she is a Policewoman from a huge spaceship that is inhabited entirely by misfits. When you have habitation modules where religious nuts live right next to people who take bodymodification to a new art form, violent feminists and slightly insane scientists/artists you need a police force to stop trouble from getting out of hand. That is the job of the Moderator Corps.

She seems to have hung out a lot with the body-mod crowd, that's why she's got bunny ears







In game terms, she is one of the "cheap" grunts in my Bakunin force. For only a few points she provides additional actions for my specialist troops. She also packs a rifle and since this is Infinity, with a little luck she might down even something far above her point cost since: "You can kill anything in this game with a rifle."


I picked her to test out my color scheme for my Nomads force. Red, purple and white. I went quite light on the purple here, might have to change that with other minis, but overall I'm quite happy with how she turned out. She was also my first try in painting nylon stockings.





Under the brush this week: Warwitch Deneghra and Ajax the Great.

Cheers
Fenris

Just won a ticket to the RPC

Tabletop Fix decided I should visit the Roleplaying Convention this year.

http://ttfix.blogspot.de/2013/05/rpc-ticket-winners.html

Thank'yee kindly!

Fenris

Unboxing: FFL: El Almirante and Antoinette Balfour

El Almirante

If you have read the Freebooter's Fate rulebook (or seen any pirate movie) you know that every carribean island has a inept governor that is hopelessly in over his head dealing with pirates and whatever else comes his way.

The governor of Leonera exactly this. Known simply as El Gobernador he managed to lose Leonera to the pirates, which is since then known as Longfall. However, before he became El Gobernador, he was a hero of the empire known as El Almirante.
Our first Legend is exactly that: El Almirante in his prime.

Wielding a saber and a pistol, El Almirante can lead an empire crew against the dastardly Pirates, the rebellious Goblins or the nefarious Brotherhood. (I'd mention Amazons, too, but I can't think of a fitting adjective)

He is accompanied by his trusty aides. Mozo, Pelada and a little dog. Mozo carries a standard and serves as a rallying point for the crew and is on a seperate base. Pelada shares a base with El Almirante. She acts as a Powdermonkey, reloading his pistol.
The dog also sits on the same base and looks cute. It has no ingame effect. Among the stretch goal bits are a collection of medals, two highly decorated weapons and a stylish hat.

Lets put it together:

When looking at the pieces I first thought, El Almirante looked kinda static. When bedecked in all his finery, however, he really looks like an Admiral, standing proudly on deck of his flagship. There is quite a lot of detail on him. Mozo and Pelada look great, too. The doggy is nice, though for some reason I expected it to be a pug, instead it's more of a terrier.

The mini fit together well, though I had a little trouble getting the hat detached from the sprue. Apparently he also bought his hat a bit to small, I had to chip away a tiny bit to fit it properly on his head.

Antoinette Balfour

The second legend is a specialist working for the Pirates crew. Packing a a heavy cutlass and a pepperbox gun (highly impractical in real life, but seriously cool) that can fire 1-3 barrels with each shot adding some BANG! with each barrel.

Along with her comes her pet monkey, Grogbag, who, as the name might indicate, is as fond of rum as his mistress. He whacks enemies with empty bottles, or, if Antoinette has her pepperbox-gun, can shoot her handed-down regular pistol.

The pair also bring along a little pile of rumbottles, which make them fearless, but may get destroyed. I just can imagine her stumbling along, with a sad monkey on her shoulder, asking: "But why's the rum gone?"

Hardly any mouldlines on the mini again. It took some work lining up her head with her body, so she did not have a gash in her throat however. Her pose is okay, nothing special. Included with the stretch goals is a different box, for her to rest her foot on. 

It gives her a combat ready appearance, though I think her body's stance fits better with the non-stretchgoal gear. I particularly like her monkey, he's wearing a little vest and headband along with big, piratey earrings.

Next up: The other half of the sisters Balfour and the amazon leader Ixchelcoatl

Arrr, Mateys!

Fenris

Unboxing: Freebooter's Fate: Legends

Yarrr! Ye landlubbers and scurvy dogs! Feast yer eyes on this cache of booty!

Aforementioned booty.

 In autumn last year I took part in Freebooter Miniatures crowdfunding project for their Legends miniature set. Today said set arrived and I eagerly unboxed it.

tons of ziplock bags

The set contains six miniatures for their skirmish game Freebooter's Fate. One character for each of the five factions, plus one exclusive character that works for both the Pirates as well as the upcoming Cult faction. (Voodoo guys)
During the funding campaign, each of the minis unlocked additional bits such as a new head option, different weapons, assistants and tons of other piratey bling. Also, some Mercenary miniatures were unlocked, that can be hired by the different factions. You can see two of them (Capitan Virgo Despiedad and the Bountyhuntress Chassa) on the right side.
Since I'm a sucker for everything Mr. Klocke sculpts, I pledged for the full set and later included the two Mercs in the order. However, I didn't get every mini offered on Indiegogo. The Goblin Captain wasn't exactly my mug of rum and the Voodoo character Papa Houngan, I might get later.

First impressions:
All pieces are present, there are no obvious miscasts, hardly any flash, the amount of bits for some of the minis is amazing. All in all the high quality I'm used to from Freebooter. Suddenly I'm thinking of getting another set to also have the non-bitted out versions to build.

Coming up tomorrow: Antoinette Balfour and El Almirante, with their assorted companions.

Arrrrr!
Captain Fenris

New PC, yay!

Got my new PC! It's bloody fast, SSDs are really the shizzle!

Minor derp during setup: I installed Windows 7 32bit which caused my Driver DVD to be in French.  Also my DVD drive was apparently an antique which only runs with IDE cables.

But now everything seems to work fine.

Cheers
Fenris

Hordes: Gargantuans

I have just finished reading through Privateer Presses newest book for Hordes and oh, boy, it's shiny!
Lots of new background advancing the storyline, lots of new models including the eponymous gargantuans, Warlocks that are units or battleengines and tons upon tons of gorgeous art. My absolute favourite piece is the art for Morvahna the Dawnshadow.

She is a druidess riding side saddle on a goat. How cool is that? When I buy the Two player Hordes box I might have to keep the Circle models, since her mini actually does her artwork justice.
Also there is a new Unit Attachment for my favourite halberd swinging werewolf dudes, the Skinwalkers. I'm told he makes them awesome.

So if I like Circle so much, why am I not playing them (yet) you may ask?
The answer is simple:

Dragons!

Legion gets probably the awesomest (yes, that's a word) model in the history of Privateer Press.

The Archangel, spawned from the blood of four warlocks with a side helping of a dead dragons teeth, this blighted monstrosity takes to the skies of Caen.

My Legion is also kinda purple-ish

I don't care about the rules (which seem halfway decent to me, anyway), I want one!
The pricetag however says that it will have to wait for a while.

The rest of Legions releases are also very cool. Everblight blesses us with a flying version of the facehugger from alien, the Afflictor. (Nicknamed the rapesnake or NCPS in America)
There is the Nephilim Bloodseer, a humanoid dragonbeastie that make everything magic more awesome. Can't wait to play that guy with Hex Hunters and Bethayne.
The Warspear Chieftain made me giddy when I added up all the bonuses I can get for his unit. It's going to be more like chucking cruise missiles at your enemy.
Our new Warlock, Lylyth also cranks awesomeness up another notch and is the first Warlock to be a Battle Engine. She rides a huge warsleigh pulled by blighted ulks. But I am not fully sold on her rules, which seem kinda "meh" to me.
Finally there is the Nyss Beast Mistress, Legions crazy cat lady. Only instead of cats she keeps dog sized landsharks that eat you. She is another first for Legion being essentially a second Warlock on a smaller scale. I'm not really sure about her either. She may be able to buff a lot of models for you, but her beasts won't benefit from Legion's ubiquitous battlegroup spells. Maybe in bigger games.

But wait, there's more: Voodoo alligators and zombie fishmen. Yeah, you heard right. The gatormen bokor brings his swamp shamblers. I haven't given them much thought yet, but they are usable by the Legion and their art is cool. Kinda like Alexia Ciannor and her risen. I have to look if you can raise casualities for more zombies and spawn lesser warbeasts from the spawning vessel. Might be interesting.


What was supposed to be a short post about gargantuans exploded into something much larger, eh?

Cheers
Fenris
(not a purple pony)

Building a table that is also a shelf, Part I

Update: Pictures are up.

What do Jesus and me have in common? We can do carpentry. Though mine probably looks a lot worse. Also I doubt he was building war games tables back then. But he surely made some bitchin' sideboards.

Underside

 

Anyway, I spent three hours today working on a dedicated Wm/H table. Who knew that screwing gets you as sweaty as, well, screwing. Dumb puns aside, the table will have the dimensions of 120x120cm, which is quite close to 48x48 inches. Not exactly, but close. (Stupid imperial system!) It will also be able to transform into a storage rack with the table halves acting as the shelves.

From a terrain perspective it will feature a Khadoran railway station alongside a river. Tracks and river will be mounted to the table with stuff like a water tower and a coal heap (a hill rules wise) movable.

Topside

Finally the table will be a testbed for a smaller Freebooter's Fate table I am dreaming of. That one will have a beach on one side and jungle on the other with a sunken Aztec pyramid in the middle. Everything will be include multiple tiers and I plan to go totally overboard with water effects.

Work in progress photos coming up once I figure out how to get them of my smartphone. Apple seems to hate me.


Totally not lacking terrain ideas
Fenris

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Review

Okay, enough with the puns already and on to the movie.

I found if really enjoyable to watch! Much moreso than the Lord of the Rings movies. When I watched those I always had the feeling: "Where is that iconic scene? Why did they leave it out? Why are there elves at Helm's Deep and where the fuck is Tom Bombadil?" With The Hobbit it is a lot more of a "Hey, they also put that in!" feeling. Maybe that is because I last read the Hobbit a long time ago.

What I liked about the movie:

The Look
Seriously, the Shire looks like I imagined it, there is the Dwarven city of Erebor, which is gorgeous (though there is a serious lack of railings), Dol Guldur looks like a proper evil fortress, or ruin thereof, Rivendell looks cool (also lacking railings). We visit the Goblincity in the Misty Mountains (what's your fetish with falling to your death, guys?) which looks a bit like Moria, but less like a mine. (Hah, a mine he calls it!)
The costumes are great, the weapons look awesome. (where can I get a replica of that dwarven sword Thorin wields?)
And to make the whole package complete there is New Zealand's beautiful landscape. The only thing looking out of place is Hugo Weaving as Elrond. The guy simply does not look like an Elf

Martin Freeman
Playing the part of Bilbo Baggins, Martin Freeman is spot on. From the first conversation with Gandalf, during the arrival of the dwarves, to the contest of riddles with Gollum, he just fits. Just like in Sherlock, he gets roped into things.

Sylvester Mccoy
Having been a Timelord, Sylvester Mccoy plays Radagast the Brown as a more wacky, hippie version of Gandalf. Even though I have only watched the new Doctor Who series, I can certainly imagine him a the Doctor. Best line: "These are Rhosgobel rabbits. I'd like to see them try!"

Putting things in context
They really want you to know about what is happening in Middle Earth. There's Gandalf and Saruman holding council with Galadriel and Elrond at Rivendell about the possibility of Sauron returning.
A lot of time is spent showing the fall of Erebor and Thorin's Vendetta against Azog is explained. We alo get to know why he is called Oakenshield.

Songs
It has songs! Catchy ones! Sung by dwarves! No pseudo-elvish moaning by Enya.

What I did not like:

Comic relief
Radagast is at times too ridiculous. The trolls are gross, for the sake of comedy. And Bombur is funny because he is fat. What a hoot.

Inaccurate Swords
Sting glows blue when in the presence of orks and goblins. Except when it does not. So do Glamdring and Orcrist. But they forgot to add it in the postproduction, apparently.

Suddenly, Eagles!
With the movie explaining so much why certain things are happening the way they are, there is absolutely no explanation for the eagles to turn up at the end of the movie. Sure, Gandalf and Gwaihir the Windlord are buddies, but Gandalf just talks to an insect, eagles turn up, save the party and the simply disappear. What?


So, in total it is an enjoyable movie, but I highly recommend reading the appendices of the Lord of the Rings and you should have read the Hobbit anyway.

Final Verdict: 10 out of 13 Dwarves.

The Hobbit and an unexpected journey

Today, I saw The Hobbit. Well, actually yesterday. Review is planned for this week or whenever I feel like it.
I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit.

However the day ended (or started, depending on your viewpoint)with a giant "screw you" from the KVB. Because the film was so long, we had to take the last train home. And because a new cable had to be laid somewhere along the line, it took us only half the way back. Maybe they thought  I would just summon some eagles to fly us home. Guess what, I'm not a Maiar.
But my superior navigation skills (aiming for the DHL tower and trudging ownward) saved the day.
Did I mention that it was -6°C?
Now I'm siting here with tea and mead demonstrating how to write a blog post. Also I might be a wee bit drunk.

Yes, I made up an entire blogpost out of an atrocious pun.
Fenris