Game Space Progress Report

So, It's been about a month and a half since we've moved in and the new place is coming along nicely. Because we do not want to repeat some of the same mistakes we made with our old place we have been allowing ourselves time to unpack from the boxes in the garage which has made progress on the game space a bit slow. Slow as it may be, progress is being made and my wife has made it quite clear that her plans for the garage do not infringe on my use of it as a gaming space.

Here are a couple of  pictures of some of some of the storage on the edges. The garage has a good couple of built-in cabinets where I think I will end up storing materials leaving the shelving for finished terrain and miniatures storage boxes. Just a hint, Costco corn dog boxes and frozen hamburger patty boxes are great for storing terrain.

The picture above shows the space I have to work with. My wife still had her massage table set up (she works on friends and family at home) so you can get a general idea of table to space ratio. Once the clutter of boxes has been removes the side wall will be lined with shelving. The chest freezer and pantry shelves will remain to the right there.

-Eli

Primaeval Designs = Amazing!

As a self-avowed prehistoric fanboy, I was absolutely floored to find the Primaeval Designs page on Facebook. I had heard their name passed around, but as I haven't the time to game in those genres or scales, I put it on the "to-do" list and forgot about it. Again, I am glad I found their FB page.

If you don't know of them, they are a miniatures sculpting group that is marketing themselves under the Acheson Creations banner much like Arrow Miniatures had down before with it's lovely line of terrain. Primaeval is in the process of creating an extensive line of what they refer to as "natural history miniatures" with gamers in mind. This includes a wide variety of animals from today and yesterday. They offer prehistoric mammals and dinosaurs as well as African animals. They even have 28mm prehistoric hominids in the works.

They plan on working in both 28mm and in 15mm (not released yet) which is cool, but so far they have released only a handful of what they have greens for. If you want to really see what is coming up, take a peak at their Facebook gallery and I'm sure you will find yourself suitably amazed. The level of detail and animation in their animals is splendid and they have avoided some of the tired tropes that have plagued some animal minis in the past. There is action in the poses, waterline river animals, feathered and smooth-skinned dinos and chimps that do not look like circus animals.

28mm Nanotyrannus

One last thing that caught my eye was the pricing on their creations. I am not entirely up to speed on animal minis, but they seemed pretty reasonable for the quality of sculpts. So far their price range runs from about $6 for a pair of 28mm prehistoric cheetahs to $38 for a 28mm Spinosaurus. They have a giant ape in 28mm for Pulp RPG purposes that comes in at $20. You can get three 28mm Dinonychus for $8. These prices are for unpainted minis. If you are not the sort to paint your own or your are getting them for cellecting not gaming, they do offer painted and "collectors" editions for an increased price.

I have to say I am quite happy with their opening works and hope they have a successful career bringing us all top notch beasties for our games.

Check them out and say hey!

-Eli

Too Crazy For Minis? - Part Two

So, in part one, I presented the basic concept, the history behind my attempts to make this idea turn into lead and even discussed the rationale and specifics of what I am looking for. Interestingly enough, the couple of comments I received seemed to repeat the general confusion over the specifics of what I am looking for that have always come up when this idea is discussed.

What I am looking for is not a humanoid lizard/dino but an alien that has the shape of one of the raptoroid dinosaurs and has evolved in that same shape. They haven't gone upright, and they haven't changed to have more human faces. About the only changes might be minor and mostly inperceptible differences in hands, postue, limb length etc.

To aid in the understanding of the project, I present the following concept drawings that I came up with on my own -

Too Crazy For Minis?

Just recently with the release of Khurasan Miniatures lovely 15mm feathered velociraptors rekindled an interest in an old project of mine - Armed Sci Fi Raptor Aliens.

About this time last year, I started a thread on TMP about the idea  but this was really a follow up to almost ten years worth of working at trying to make them happen through one means or another. I first started with the original Eureka 300 Club and have run the project through at least two attempts there but in the nearly ten years that the 300 Club has been around it hasn't happened. I'm not sure why the concept failed but part of it has to do with the eb and flow of the poularity of sci fi minis, little supporting media and the fact that 15mm has rarely been more popular thna it is now despite my own personal long love of the scale.

When you think about it, there isn't much to not like about the concept of Jurassic Park runaways tricked out with a little scifi kit and guns. Some people, as can be seen in the TMP thread, didn't quite grasp the concept entirely. Many though I was referring to the conjectural dinosauroids that have been popularized for the last couple of decades. But I am not after humanoid saurions, I am after intelligent raptors.

The idea of intelligent dinosaurs who have maintained most of their original anatomical geometry is not completely without its merit and interest. There have been other artists who have tapped into the wicked combination of animal sleekness, cunning, and/or  high-tech firepower.

An example of a dinosaur-like alien are the Sii-ruuk from Star Wars. Though they are not purely based on earthly dinos, they have the same sort of geometry I am looking for - non-anthropomorphic but evolved to tool use. For me, I want to keep the dinosaur charm and excitement but turn them into an intelligent alien race.

One artists, the author of the RobotBlood blog has created some lovely dinosauroids, depicting them in the height of their own evolution, utilizing tools that fit their own anatomy. Note the feathers and the the very avian appearance. He even did a study of a form of fighting style for them. As you can see below in the sketches and drawings, he has maintained the dinosaur geometry, so you have lovely, tool-using dino primitives.

Now comes the question of why such figures have not appealed in the past and whether or not they will appeal now, a year after I last brought them up on TMP. Surely there is a greater desire/need for interesting aliens out there. Khurasan Miniatures' Garn miniatures have given use a fully bipedal dinosaur-like alien but is there room in the market for sleek, long-necked dinos with guns? As an attempt to demonstrate my idea, I am tempted to do some conversion work on some existing dinosaur minis assuming I can find some that are not too big, but beyond a small squad of a few demonstration models, I am not sure how many I am willing or able to convert. Doing kit and especially guns at 15mm can be tricky, especially with consistency.

Tell me what you think. Is there merit to this idea? Would you buy them if they existed? What are your reasons for not buying or lack of interest?

Thank you,

-Eli

The Dropship Lands In The 1970s

For anyone who's followed the this blog for a while, it's no mystery that I enjoy alternate histories, imagi-nations, and alternate timelines. I'm not a huge fan of time travel, but I do like the what-ifs of history. Well, it just so happens that Mark over at Dropship Horizon has started on a non-scifi project and has kicked off a new blog chronicling the adventures of he and his partner in crime The Master Chef.

The blog, titled "The Winter of '79" is centered around an alternate history that spawns from the unrest following the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Of course in Mark's version, things got worse than they did in real history. I have it straight from the mouths of the gents involved that this will all be played out in both larger scale conflicts such as riots, suppressions, and police actions and on a smaller street level involving the "small ops" side of this conflict.

I'm excited and am now adding a new section to the side bar of my blog to feature fun alternate history blogs.

Take care and check out Mark's new blog!

\-Eli

Where Do I Go From Here?

As I unpack and evaluate what I have built up so far, I find myself wondering which direction to go in when I have the time. Over the last couple of years, I have worked on many things, started some new things, but I have not finished anything. That is a horrible record, if you ask me, and I cannot say that I have a single playable force. beyond a limited skimirsh of addhock forces. for any project I have in the works.

The problem comes from a serious case of gamer ADD, "OOO Shiny", and actually a good amount of overplanning and analysis paralysis. I have a tendancy to overthink projects and in doing so, I think I may actually be killing the spark that made them appealing in the first place. So much time is spent on the hypothetical or theoretical aspects of the projects like background, layout, etc, that I find myself working my way to a stand still or stagnation.

An example of this can be seen in a recent project I started for a conversion of a toy into a spaceship for use as scenery or scenario element in 15mm scifi miniatures gaming. Before I got ahold of the toy, I started doodling and drawing what ideas I could come up with to make it look less like the toy it started out as and more like the spaceship that I wanted it to be. Nothing wrong with this part, just yet.

The problem really came up when I found myself pulling out graph paper and tryign to draw internal drawings of what the deck plan might look like inside the ship which, of course, is completely inconsequential for something that is essentially a pieceo f gaming table window dressing. It got so bad that that ship was all I was doodling. I'm pretty sure that, if I had them, I'd have tried doing mock-up of the ship in my mashed potatoes.

Bottom line, I have got to finish some stuff up, maybe even scrap some things. The problem is figuring out what projects really grab me and which ones I'm doing just to get done or to see if I can. I think it's important to be passionate about a project if you are going to be working on it, otherwise you'll just end up grinding your way through it.

Anyhow, enough self examination.

Take care,

-Eli

Update

Hey All,

So life trudges along and I am stiull in the process of getting settled into the new home. Though we have the essentials and some of the luxuries unpacked there is a lot to do before we will be back to having a lived in home. This also means that it has been difficult for me to get any projects started or posted.

Much of my gaming/hobby stuff is still in boxes in the garage and though I know where it is, I do not have a suitable place to store it just yet. My wife and I agreed to try to keep stuff packed until we had the proper storage materials for it so we could avoid cluttering up the place like we had in the apartment. I also have a bit of a draft and moisture issue to try to tackle in the garage before I start to take stuff out of boxes.

I have managed to scrape together a regular Thursday gaming group with my brother and one of the members of my old gaming group. So far, we have done a lot of warm up stuff to try and get the group gelled but we may be playing some superhero RPG stuff soon. My oldest daughter, Anna, has been the real gaming powerhouse around here. Since she hit summer break she has has her cousins around a lot and is obsessed with running them on Labyrinth Lord/D&D games.

So far she has run three or four sessions and I am impressed by her ability to DM on the fly. She has been coming up with some wonderful adventure hooks, encounters, puzzles and traps. Much of it she draws from her own interests outside of gaming, such as the sea serpent hunt that her party was contracted for. This was drawn from her love of dragons and draconic mythical creatures. Her party has found a dragon egg too and is in the process of adventuring to get treasure to build a proper nursery for it. One of her puzzle, obstacle encounters presented the party with a way to get across and underground lake to an island in the middle that involved figuring out the right combination of moving rocks to jump from. Anna is still a bit bossy when she runs games, but her players seem to enjoy it and I'm sure she'll tempor with experience and age.

I hope to be getting back int othe swing of things soon and do have a few projects lined up for the coming weeks/months, but this depends on money and time. I am also having to seriously rethink my hobby budget and how I am using the resources I have available to me. Need to rope in the oo shiny, stop thinking too big for my britches and work on projects that are within my means both monetary and timewise.

You all take care and worry not, the adventuring Emu is not fading away.

-Eli