Origins 2014 Recap!

...so the wife I have returned from one of our favorite cons, Origins Game Fair!  Here's the recap:

Thursday

We lost a day this year due to some family coming in to town on short notice, so we got started on Thursday.  I headed in early for a Justice Society of America RPG - the GM, Doug Kern, did a fantastic job running the game, and all of his games throughout the con had a continuous story, which was a neat idea.  Unfortunately being effective in this game meant knowing a lot about the Golden Age JSA, which isn't really my strong point.  Still, it was extremely well-structured and a lot of fun.

After my game, I headed to our regular base of operations at Origins: the Board Room.  For a flat fee of $20, you can get access to the Board Room - the Columbus Area Boardgame Society brings their massive game library to the con, and you can check out games for free all week long.  It's really a killer deal, plus it gives our group a central base of operations/meeting point for the duration of the convention.  As Funderhammer's kids were in attendance Thursday, kid-friendly fare was the order of the day, so we started off with Fill The Barn:

This was a fairly easy-to-learn card-drafting game with a cute theme, but a good bit of planning & strategy came into play - I'd recommend it to someone looking for a kid-friendly board game.  I came in dead last, of course.

After Fill The Barn, Funderhammer took the kids to play the BattleTech pods, and we played an old favorite, Zombie Fluxx:

...if you've never played the Fluxx games, I highly recommend them - they're super easy to learn, easy to teach to your non-gamer friends & family, and cheap enough to pick up as an afterthought.  They all basically play the same and come in different flavors like Original, Zombie, Eco, and Monty Python.

After the game I made a lap of the dealer hall and stopped by the Z-Man Games booth - I primarily wanted to pick up some card packs I needed (which they didn't have, I had to go home and order them online), as well as a the most recent Pandemic expansion, In the Lab:

After wandering around and grabbing a bite to eat, we headed home for the night.

Friday

We headed in fairly early on Friday.  We wasted a lot of time BS'ing in the Board Room, and by the time our group started to set up for a game, I had to leave for a seminar, Intro to Marker Techniques.  In the past year or so I've been playing around with doing some sketching, and have primarily been using technical pens & Prismacolor markers, but I didn't really feel like I was using them to any great effect - I saw this class taught by Heather V. Kreiter and thought it could be just the ticket.  Heather is extremely talented, and I was blown away by what she's able to achieve using art markers - I would have sworn her work was done with brush/acrylics, or even an airbrush, if I hadn't seen her do it in person.  She also tipped me off about a great site to get markers on the cheap.

After a quick bite for lunch I headed to my next seminar, Podcasting.  There's no shortage of gaming podcasts out there, but I'd be lying if I said the thought of making my own hadn't crossed my mind - to get a better idea of what's involved, I went to a seminar hosted by Gregory A. Wilson of the Speculate! science fiction podcast.  This seminar was full of great information - everything from formats, how to interview effectively, editing, software & hardware, etc.  Podcasting, like a lot of other things, is easy to do, but hard to do well.  I don't see a podcast in the near future, but it gave me a lot to think about.

While I was in the podcasting seminar, my wife texted me - I had won a game!  See, in the past, CABS was able to give a complimentary game to everyone who bought a Board Room pass - but this was entirely dependent on donations from publishers.  This year, every time you checked a game out of the library, they would give you a raffle ticket.  A couple times a day they would draw raffle tickets, tape them to copies of a new game, and place them on the table - if you had the matching ticket, you won!  I won a copy of Tahiti from Minion Games:

When I got back to the Board Room, our group was wrapping up the first play.  Overall it got pretty good reviews - it appears to be a tile placement/farming mechanic similar to Settlers of Catan or Agricola, but simplified.  It sounds like this could be another good one to have around to induct non-gamer friends.

After Tahiti, our group played a game we had really liked from the previous year, Wasabi! from Z-Man Games:

Wasabi! is a tile-laying game, with a unique theme: you're collecting ingredients and trying to make sushi rolls.  It sounds silly, but it actually involves quite a bit of strategy and can get tense at times.  I would have bought this if it had been available in the Dealer Room, but it appears to be out of print at the moment.

Next: Part II!

Dreamforge Games Levithan Crusader Kickstarter

Well, someone finally came up with a Kickstarter project I liked enough to back -  Mark at Dreamforge Games is running a Kickstarter that will allow him to purchase new tooling that will allow him to produce his Levithan Crusader model with better quality at a lower price point.

I've been drooling over the Leviathan model since I first saw it last year, but couldn't bring myself to drop almost $400 on one (although they look like they're worth every penny).  Now's your chance to help an up-and-coming company, and to score an awesome model for a fraction of the cost.

ChapterHouse Studios Conversion Bits

I got an order in from ChapterHouse Studios the other day:

...this is a set of their Gun-Halberd Weapons and a couple of the Imperial/Eagle Storm Shields.  The halberds will be used for my Grey Knights - I just thought the shields were cool, I don't necessarily have a plan for them yet.  This is the first time I've ordered anything from ChapterHouse.  I've looked at their stuff before, but never pulled the trigger - I heard an interview with Nick from ChapterHouse on Episode 8 of the Screaming Heretic podcast, and decided to give it a shot.  Their stuff looks good, and it's nice to not have to wait for parts to get here from the UK or Poland for once!

Armorcast Cinematic Effects

...one item I became aware of a while ago were the Cinematic Effects from Armorcast.  Basically, these are sculpted muzzle flashes, smoke plumes, etc., that make your model's wargear look like it's actually functioning.  While it's kind of a neat idea, I wasn't really sold on them because 1.) the larger effects can get kinda pricey, and 2.) I'm an obsessive completest - if I started buying these things and liked 'em, I wouldn't stop until every model in all of my armies had them, and every single one of my models would have fifty dollars worth of accessories attached. :-)

But, one of the units I got in a Craigslist lot was an old unit of metal Stormboyz - and the models were boring.  I really liked the look of the ScrapTech Jump Rocket Blast, and thought it might be a good way to spice up the appearance of the models.  One of the first stops I made in the Adepticon dealer room was the Armorcast booth - I had written down the SKU number and asked for them.  "Sold out", they told me,  "we brought a dozen of 'em, and one guy came and cleaned us out".  That bummed me out, but when I got home I ordered them off the web site and had them a few day later:

As I said, they're kinda pricey ($10.00 per three-pack), but they do look really cool - I don't know how the sculptor was able to get such an "organic" look to these, but they nailed it.

Of course these all needed to be pinned:

I waited until after I had the rocket blasts mounted to attach the models to their bases, since the blasts are long enough that if I mounted the models to their bases flat-footed, they would sit funny.

Wartrukk Conversion

...so one of the models I got in a Craigslist lot is the Ork Wartrukk:

I don't know when the above model came out - second edition?  Third?  Before I started playing 40K, anyway.  I've also never been entirely clear if this is an old unit that's no longer supported by the current codex, or if it's the previous incarnation of the current Trukk.  Regardless, the model sucks.  It's extremely boring, and the scale is all wrong.  You can see that I added some Freeboota touches with my Green Stuff press molds and a Grot rigger, but that was about it so far.  I decided the model needed some more attention - since my other Trukks are going to be running Wreckin' Balls & Boarding Planks, I decided to see if I could scratchbuild these to make this model a bit more interesting.

I started with the Wreckin' Ball.  I took some wooden balls I had picked up at the craft store at some point:

I randomly drilled some holes in it with my pin vise:

...then I cut the tips off of a handful of toothpicks:

...and glued them into the holes.

Next, I took a sprue of chains from a Reaper Razig weapon pack:

...and added one to the Wreckin' Ball:

Next, I need to build a mount for the Wreckin' Ball.  I took an assortment of styrene rods, plasticard, my hobby saw, mitre box & tubing cutter, and just started playing with different shapes & lengths until I got something I liked:

 Then I mounted the Wreckin' Ball to it:

Then I punched out some rivets and added them to the mount:

I added some more chains around the "spool" and mounted the whole thing in the bed of the Wartrukk:

Next, I started on the boarding plank.  I actually didn't have any craft sticks, so I took these wooded squares:

These also came from the craft store.  They're very brittle, so I just scored them with my hobby knife and snapped them off to make planks:

Then I cut two lengths of styrene "I-beam" and glued the planks across them in a haphazard fashion:

Rivets were added:

The ends were closed with plasticard:

Some "hooks" from a fantasy Chaos banner were added:

Next, a mount was made from styrene:

...and it was mounted in the bed of the Wartrukk:

(Even though the new Trukk models have a plank on each side, I thought this model would look too cluttered if I added another one on the other side, so I decided to leave it at that.  if a rules lawyer want to argue about it, I'll just say it's on a swivel).

After looking at it, I decided it needed a bit more detail, so I added some "hand cranks" for the Wreckin' Ball assembly:

A few other touches - I gave the driver a pirate hat (he is a Freeboota, after all):

(For some reason, the pirate hat with the sunglasses cracks me up).

I've also been meaning to re-purpose one of these sprues from all the Reaper bits I've been using:

It turns out it's the perfect size to use as a bumper for this model:

...and that's about it - overall I'm really pleased with how it came out - it went from looking terrible to being an interesting model.  I considered picking up a cheap toy car in a much larger scale to give it "monster truck" -style wheels and scale it up a bit closer to the current Trukk model, but I think that would be a ton of work to make it look right... maybe if I see something fitting next time I'm at the dollar store I'll give it a shot.