Kickstarters from Mantic Games and Avatars of War

Kickstarter?

It's time to spread the world a little. Mantic Games and Avatars of War both have started kickstarter campaigns to fund their upcoming product lines. In geek community, this method is generally used by sculpters to fund for their initial costs or by some idealist who is trying to return something back to life which is OOP.

When they announced the kickstarters, the community responded with a mixture of ideas. The attitude is generally supportive until now; but there are some ideas that those companies are already well established (especially Mantic), hence they should be funding for their own products.

Mantic's kickstarter worked wonders for them. They were asking for only $5,000 where they had that amount in just 4 hours. That was quite unbelievable. They went on to introduce some more stretch goals afterwards and they were smashed in no time one after another. By the time I am writing this, they were at $46,113 from 290 backers. The only stretched goal remaining is the $50k mark unless they define new ones. There are 25 more days until this kickstarter ends; so it's just a matter of time that stretched goal is achieved. UN-FRIGGING-BELIEVABLE...

On the other hand however, there is Avatars of War's kickstarter, which is not doing that good. Their pledge amount is $20,000 and by the time this lines were written, they were at $3,480 from 31 funders. To be honest, they are doing alright too, by collecting that much of a money within 2 days. I think the success story of Mantic's overshadowed theirs. AoW also promise some cool stuff to be put in production if this pledge is achieved, including an army of undead werewolves! My English fails me there to define such a coolness... :)

So, that's pretty much it. See the kickstarter pages to see what they promise to do if they achieved their pedge and what is in it for you. Go on, support them and be a part of this. AoW guys need it more currently; but why not support both, right? Back to you Robin...

Mega Game at MetuCon'12

MetuCon, Turkey's biggest RPG gaming convention took place last month. I and my usual gaming buddy Mr. Lee were there to play a big game: A 6000 pointer. I know it is not THAT big to begin with; but keep in mind that we both traveled some 600kms with our armies, terrains, mats and other stuff to make it happen.

Greenskin deployment (!)

The game was an epic battle between  two races which hated each other since the beginning of the time: My dwarfs vs. Mr. Lee's green horde. There were about 850 miniatures total on the table plus the scenery. Before the game, we both feared that deploying so much stuff could make the gaming experience suffer and whatnot; but it turned out to be the opposite. We both were fairly quick during the setup and deployment, within less than one hour, all the minis were unpacked and were ready on their trays, the table setup was complete and the regiments were deployed. The greenskin deployment was state of art especially. They barely fit on 4x12' battlefield :)

We were ready to start the game by 11:30 or so and there was already a crowd around the table. During the entire game, we had bystanders, question askers, jokers and all kind of weird guys; because you know, it was an RPG convention. Jokes aside, it was very nice to see the crowd around us who were interested in the game although most of them had no clue about wargaming. As you can guess, lots of trash talks and taunts (even some Shakespearean ones) happened during the game. Being a gentleman, I won't be sharing them here of course; but I'll just say that Mr. Lee has some voice recording from that day. That's all I'm saying.

An overview of battlefield

The game itself flew quickly too, by 6 pm we were packed up and ready to go. We both didn't know what we were doing exactly and more importantly didn't have a solid plan or didn't have a plan to begin with. Lots of dice rolled, lots of "I swear too much" incidents happened and in the end we had smiling faces and hurting backs. On Mr. Lee's blog, you can find the the army lists and the battle report (Part 1, Part2)

The only thing I would have liked to do about that day was printing some posters and flyers about our game. We had an idea of printing somethings like an old classic boxing match advertisement between BuRock vs Mr. Lee and handing them over to the convention crowd; but we just couldn't make it. It would have been a good remembrance from that day. Well, next time then...

Here is an album that contains photos from that game. Some ours, some from the crowd's cameras. Enjoy...

Heavy Industry Move: Chaos Hellcannon

Previously I wrote that I need to focus on the cores, right? See, core troops are overrated :) Until the point that you are unable to field an army due to the lack of them that is. Jokes aside, since The Legion of Azgorh is an elite army list, I opt to field minimum amount of core troops allowed. All the killer troops are in special and rare categories and that's where your points should go if you want a competitive list imho. With a new league in horizon at my club, I decided to add some more punch to my army, broaden my selections and possibly confusing fellow competitors about what I can field. Also, enslaving daemons in huge piles of metal sounds pretty cool ;)

I got this miniature from an eBay deal and it was a bargain. Yes, I'm an eBay addict and seriously thniking on founding an instution like Anonymous eBayers (AeB?). I think it can be a thing. Anyways, as you can see, the kit is missing some decorative bits like the ones that tie the monster to the ground; but all the necessary parts were there. I'm telling you, it was a bargain :)

I wanted a dark, worn look on both the machine/monster and the crew, hence I was even harsher with my washes. The chassis of the hellcannon is painted with the same recipe with my infantries and the metal parts are boltgun washed with badab then HLed with boltgun again and mithril. The soul cages, heh... soul cage... funny saying, I painted them to Deep Yellow (vallejo) first as an undercoat. The I washed them with Baal Red just a little. The HLs of the souls/skulls were done with Golden Yellow first and White later. Nothing special with the crew, except that I liked how the dark skin on them turned out. I also made them removable with magnets beneath them. Nothing fancy to be honest. After I did them, I noticed that the wounds of the hellcannon are not counted with the remaining crew, so it's kind of dumb; but it is what it is...

That's pretty much all about the hellcannon. So, onwards to the ranting section. Recently, I noticed that I developed an allergy to Pattex, the super glue I have been using. Hence, I wear a mask all the time; but even that doesn't help at times. This reduces my productivity seriously, so I'm looking for a solution. I've checked the other super glues in the market: Bison, Scotch and a few local ones but it seems they all use the same active agent: something cyanide if I am not mistaken. I wonder if there is anyone out there who suffers the same reactions and is there any substitues for super glues. Oh, and since I am still ranting, I must say that the weather started to get awfully hot here. Last time I checked it was 29 degrees celcius (84 fahrenheit), significantly higher in my balcony where my workbench is. Oh well, what can you do sometimes, right?

Enjoy...