Adepticon 2023 Haul

 Hello.

2 posts in one day. Crazy right? This ones super quick and dirty. We went to Adepticon for Saturday and part of Sunday. I spent a fraction of what I thought I would this year. I had a couple key purchases in mind and was sort of surprised at just how much stuff was out of stock or vendors didn't bring. I was also surprised at how many vendors were there with booths but no, or very little, actual product. 

Heres the haul.

First of all, I set out with the specific intention of purchasing the Firefight Veermyn Starter box. No one had it. Mantic told me they sold out of everything veermyn except one vehicle on Thursday. These things happen but it was a touch disappointing to find that out.

I ended up ebaying one from the show but for obvious reasons its not in the photo. 

The surprise highlight was Demon Ship. This is a nice quick "microgame" from Malev Minis (thru Blacksite Studio) I've been following the progress of on instagram. I got a chance to demo the game with Malev himself and had him sign my demo copy. What I was not expecting was to be able to preorder the set from the booth. I was told it would ship in a couple weeks and I'm gonna cover the game in full when it gets here. It was a definite Highlight of the show for me though.

I picked up a couple packs of figs from them as well but didnt go to heavy as theres a second edition on preorder now and I wasn't sure what would translate and how.

I also picked up some eightbound and a couple chibi figures from Impact to put on my shelf. Five Leagues is a solo/coop fantasy game. My wife was interested in rangers of shadow deep this time last year but we've found the figure and terrain requirements a bit of a road block and I'm wondering if this might be an easier sell.

The angry chicken is a con exclusive mini and scenario for conquest. 

Finally with money still burning a hole in my pocket I picked up two sets of Mazon Labs for Deadzone. I was not expecting these to be single part casts (except one figure) and theyve already been cleaned, primed, and by the time this posts at least partially painted. 

I also got a sweet leatherface bust from Black Heart but don't have a good pic at the moment and I also picked up a Game Envy wet palette which was sold out but will ship soon I'm told.

We did try a few games and I will give super brief thoughts below

Demon Core - No relation to the above game. This is a "warcry like" skirmish game in development from Bestiarum Minis. It was great to meet the designer and we chatted at length about having a great excuse to finally print the figures. More on this in a month or two when the patreon or kickstarter is announced.

Creature Caster Judgement - A year ago I would've bought this in a heartbeat. Now a days I'm more aware of what will hit my table and I just can't imagine I'll ever play it. I enjoyed the demo but ultimately passed. If its at adepticon next year I may cave. I really wish this was out before Aristeia as I really only have room for one of these arena type games and this was a little more fun.

 Hobgoblin - This is a mass battle game from the creator of Gaslands. I got to meet the other author (whos name I don't remember, a fact I feel awful about) who is also the editor of Blaster Mag. The game was neat but frankly uninspiring. It seems to be a mass battle game with generic units where you can points buy keywords. I loved the system in Fantastic Battles but this isnt anything new. What was inspiring was the demo giver's army. 3d printing from One Page Rules, he had a nice sized beastman army. I will probably pick up the rules based on simplicity but we'll see what the kickstarter looks like.

All in all, I had a great time catching up with friends and looking at inspiring stuff. "visit a convention" was on my list for the year, though I'd still like to attend an event before years end where I play a game or two. 

Follow up posts coming soon.

Building a Better Workbench - Painting on The Go

I suppose "Better" might be the wrong word choice here. In the days before the quarantine, (henceforth referred to as "the before times") I found myself painting at the shop once a week and frequently spending time outside of the house. At Cold Wars I spent quite a bit of time with the wonderful folks over at Hobby U chatting and painting. Thankfully everyone there was kind enough to provide or share supplies but I found myself spending a lot of time thinking of what kind of things I'd need for a travel set up, for things like shows, paint nights etc. After talking a bit with Impending Duff and seeing his set up at a class he ran here, I opted for the Creature Caster carrying case. This post is one part a review of that and one part my "must-have" tools, supplies, etc.

First up the bag.

I ordered the bag around the time Adepticon would have happened and postal issues aside received it pretty quickly. I opted to add on a couple extra trays but I'll get back to that in a moment. The bag by itself comes with a tray that will hold 48 paints and a sheet of 3" pluck foam.

As you can see the bag also has a strap and extra pockets for holding odds and ends. This pocket here has specific holders for brushes as well. Probably more slots than I'll need but a nice option.  The bag is high quality and at first glance at least seems to fill all my needs. of course this is before trying to fill it. 

I won't pretend to want to drag my (incredibly) messy desk with me on the road but it would be nice to be able to bring a single project with me depending on where I'm going. I think the bag was designed pretty clearly with the Pro-Acryl paints in mind but the Vallejo Bottles seem to fit just fine.

When picking and choosing what I want to bring with me I set out with the intention of basically having a home set up and a road set up separate. I'm incredibly fortunate to have easy access to a hobby shop so my original plan was to simply buy doubles of the key paints as a sort of neutral palette to start.

Here are what I deem "essential" These are basically paints that I use in the majority of my projects.

Vallejo

Leather Brown

Black Grey

Iraqi Sand

Burnt Umber

Beige Brown

Ivory

Panzer Aces

Flesh Base

Old Wood

Army Painter

Strong Tone

Dark Tone

Chainmail

Citadel

Fleshshade

Retributor Armor

Greenstuff World

Black Ink

This leaves 34 slots to add specific colors for specific tasks which should be more than enough. My one critcism is that the slots really aren't wide enough for the citadel bottles but The majority of my citadel "must haves" have been transfered into empty vallejo style bottles. If you're mostly using citadel, p3 or Tamiya for example, you'll want to take advantage of the pluck foam.

The next step in the storage war is essential painting accessories.

List is as follows

Red Grass Games Palette

Red Grass Games Palette Paper

Brushes

Hobby Knife

Super Glue

Citadel Handle

I'm sure it doesn't need much explaining as the logic here is pretty simple. The bare essentials for any given paint session. Not pictured is the wavy attachment for the palette but I definitely made sure to bring that with me as I use a lot of washes and that attachment is essential for that.

At this point I packed the bag up and discovered a pretty major criticism. The way the straps attach to the bag, picking the bag up by the strap results in it tipping 90 degrees immediately. If it was easier to keep level I'd be comfortable leaving it on with paint in the pallet but as is, I took the strap off. Perhaps loaded completely with paint it does level out but I don't see myself filling the case every time.

All in all I'm happy with the bag, even more so after taking the set up out of my normal hobby area and into the living room to test it out. I'm sure it'll get use when the isolation is over.

You can see that it really does have the room to get some painting done "on the go." In the future, I'll use the spare foams to pack specific projects to work on and switch out on the fly. The case would easily double as a carrying case for skirmish games like Kill Team as well which is a nice bonus. All in All I'm pretty happy and can recommend it. 

Heres what I managed to get done before retreating back into the hobby room.

Flintcon 2020

Each year in Flint Michigan, a friend of ours runs a nice little convention called FlintCon. Its a pretty short drive, there's usually a decent turn out for the flea market and the games are usually pretty good. I'm very much so a "convention-fan" so I don't usually miss an opportunity to go to a show more or less in my backyard.

Photos after the Jump

The Battle of Hoth Playtest

As part of the convention circuit this year. Dan and I are running a big 10mm Battle of Hoth scenario at FlintCon in February. This evening the normal group and I set up what is basically the first playtest game. After some deliberation we settled on trying out Future War Commander for the rules. 

Originally we were going to use Horizon Wars as a bit of an homage to an earlier episode in which we reviewed the rules but the more I thought about what I wanted from the game, the more we looked for something a little more streamlined.

I've rated the troops pretty much as such for the first game and like all my bright ideas, what is present on paper is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the ideas I have up top.

Storm Troopers
MV 10 ATTACKS 3/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4 SAVE 5
At-st
MV 15 ATTACKS 4/60 ASSAULT 4 HITS 4 SAVE 4
At-at
MV 10 ATTACKS 6/60 ASSAULT 4 HITS XX SAVE 3
Rebels
MV 10 ATTACKS 3/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4L SAVE 6 COST 20
Snow Speeders
MV 10/20 ATTACKS 4/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4 SAVE5/6 SEE NOTE
ATTACH TOW 4+ DROP SAVE TO 5 AND MOVE TO 10
Turrets
MV - ATTACKS 4/60 ASSAULT - HITS 5 SAVE 5

This was more or less my blind guess at what would work. The Rules state that troops in the open are hit on a 4 and troops in trenches on a 6 so my logic is "rebels will be hard to his but easy to kill. Stormtroopers will be hard to kill but easy to hit" We'll see how it pans out in subsequent tests. On to the Scenario

Rebels (Deployed in the Trench Lines)
XX x Stands of Infantry
5 x Gun Turrets
4 x Snow Speeders (Recyclable)(Start in Echo Base)

Empire (Deployed on the board edge)
15 x Stands of Infantry
4 x At-St
3 x AT-AT

And some eye candy from the Playtest game

Some thoughts. Most of the numbers worked really well, especially considering my lack of experience with the rules.The Snowspeeders however basically need an entire rewrite and after a lot of debate we decided to basically come up with a new system for them that would make it a little easier to attach but a little harder to kill. I think we'll be testing it once or twice more before the show but in general, it's almost there. Ill need to print the turrets and do a little more basing but otherwise I think we're just about ready. I have a page full of notes to tweak some stuff but its nothing major. We are on track for Flintcon