My new garden statue!

Na-naaaaaa-na-na-na-na-naaa-naa-naa-na-naa-naa-na-na-naaaaa...

See the full set at the sculptor's Flickr page.

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Solomon Kane

Yesterday I watched the movie Solomon Kane, based on the Robert E Howard character of the same name, and although it's certainly not a great work of art I liked it!

Rain, mud, leather and that hat. Yepp, sums it up nicely!

I do own the Del Rey Solomon Kane collection but I haven't got around to actually reading it yet, so I can't really say how faithful the movie is to the source material. But I really like the bleak autumn/winter setting, the copious amounts of rain and mud and how the movie is kind of scaled back. It isn't about saving the world, it's about trying to rid some god-forsaken corner of England of an evil sorcerer. It's very predictable, we've seen all of the characters before and the ending could've been better but it still manages to retain a nice gritty feeling throughout. And even though the characters might be kind of flat there are some great actors in there, like Pete Postlethwaite, James Purefoy and, of course, Max Von Sydow.

Lately I've seen a few movies that have reminded me of the Warhammer RPG a lot, and Solomon Kane is most definitely one of them. If Sherlock Holmes is the kind of whimsical hunt-cultists-in-the-Altdorf-streets-kind of Warhammerish movie and I Sell the Dead is the (even more whimsical) weird-and-fantastical-things-keep-happening-but-just-go-with-it kind of Warhammerish movie, then Solomon Kane is the gritty trudge-through-the-mud-to-try-and-stop-the-marauders-from-killraping-your-home-village kind of Warhammerish movie. It's like a nice pallet showing the different colours of the Warhammer world!

Again, don't expect a great work of art, but I think it's a nice dark fantasy movie with good production values and quite a few beatiful vistas. It's an origin story with a lot of room for expansion, but because of the seemingly botched launch of the movie I wonder if it'll make enough money to get a sequal underway. It irks me that complete drivel like the Resident Evil or AvP movies keep getting sequal after sequal, whereas movies like Solomon Kane most likely won't. I mean, as long as you're making B-movies can't you at least not make the really bad ones?!

Anyway, check it out if you like dark sword and sorcery, ghouls, dismemberment, puritans in distress and/or mud! Now, here's a trailer:

Oh, and I really like the concept of mirrors being magical instruments that can be used as portals to other realms. More mirrors!

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Comparison shots

People have been asking me to snap some shots comparing the official Spartan Games miniatures and my Yamato ships. So here you go:

Never mind the pin vice, it's only there to keep the balance of the very back heavy Sorylian ship.

As you can see my ships are a fair bit sleeker compared the more chunky resin ship, but that's to be expected considering the different materials. Size wise I think they fit excellent however, and I'm looking forward to battling with them as that should really show them off nicely.

Oh, and I got my paints the other day so hopefully you'll see some developments on that front soon. I think I'll try to paint these models rather quick and dirty, not bothering too much with hightlighting and such. We'll see how it turns out...

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Quick Yamato update

It's been pretty slow on the Yamato/Starblazers front. I've been trying to find a grey primer spray but have been out of luck or found ones that are a way to expensive. In the end I went with an acrylic spray from the DIY store, and it's actually pretty ok. Not perfect, but good enough for the job.

So I've primed the Andromeda and three cruisers. Never mind the yellowish colour, it's because of the lighting and my camera.

Booooom!!

It's not all that exciting. I mean... they're just grey. But it's progress and I hope I'll be able to start painting these when I get my vallejo paints next week. Weee!

The other battleship, the frigates and of course Yamato herself is coming as well. I just need to finish up the magnetizing process on them. Oh and the carrier of course, but it needs some modifications.

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EVE mon amour

My first contact with the world of MMORPGs was Star Wars Galaxies from SOE. And although it had some major flaws, it nevertheless managed to convey a great sense of freedom, exploration and adventure. The planets were absolutely huge and in the early days before space ships and speeders were introduced going to far away locations was a major undertaking. I remember gathering a bunch of people together to make the trek to Jabba's palace out in the Dune Sea. None of us had ever been there and we only had a vague idea of where it was, pieced together from local rumours in Mos Eisley. Arming ourselves as best we could with low level blaster rifles and pistols we headed out...

As we made our way across the desert we lost a few people to attacks from the local fauna (that's why we needed a group in the first place. I'd never have survived alone!) and the journey itself probably took about an hour, but then when we suddenly saw the giant structure in the distance and with Tatoo I and II setting everyone just stopped and stared. It was a beautiful sight!

This was before the dark times... before That Other Game...

To be honest though, I've played a lot of World of Warcraft and had great fun with it, but the kind of sandbox world that was popular about ten years ago, has pretty much disappeared. MMO's these days are very "gamey" and I think that the term has gone from MMORPG to simply MMO is not only a matter of pronounciation difficulty. Honestly, how can you roleplay in WoW? I fail to see how it's even possible beyond its most shallow and meaningless form: overuse of thou and adding the letter E to the end of each and every word! Although I've never actually roleplayed in an MMO I do like when it feels like you could if you wanted to. SWG managed that and it was really cool to have all these different people eking out a living as everything from bounty hunters to clothes designers to mining tycoons!

There is one other game that manages to capture that feeling, and that is EVE Online from Icelandic developers (and publishers) CCP. EVE is a space based game where you take the role of a pilot for one of the four great factions. You get your little starter ship and then you can do... anything! The entire game is player driven and although you can take on missions from NPC agents that is just a small small part of the whole.

A newly minted Minmatar pilot in his Reaper starter ship.

You can do more or less anything you can imagine being possible in a space based game. Want to shoot some pirates? Blast away! Want to be a pirate? Here's an eye-patch for ya! Want to be a CEO of a major corporation? Just start working on your social skills. Gun for hire? Plenty of miners who need protection. Business mogul? Start researching the market fluctuations. Asteroid mining? There's always a demand for more ore! I could go on and on.

An Amarr Prophecy battlecruiser firing at my Minmatar Hurricane. I'm returning fire with an artillery barrage. Oh, and just to be clear, I'm the little dot in the distance...

And since practically all of it is player driven it feels like a real universe with real people and real consequences. If you want to be a pirate there's no NPC traders that you can go after, you need to find some poor unfortunate victim to rob! Or if you advertise your corporation (guild) as mercenaries you'll have to show your strength or no one will hire you. Or if you're in a mining corp you might want to consider hiring some mercs to protect you when you mount mining expeditions into low security sectors. etc etc.

Me hauling some ore in my Mammoth. Did I mention that EVE is also absolutely gorgeous?!

It's basically the opposite of games like WoW. Unfortunately it's the opposite when it comes to new player friendliness and learning curve as well. Although they've improved the new player experience in recent years it's still a very dense game and the sheer mass of information you need to assimilate when you start out can be staggering and I can only imagine the hordes of players who've been scared off by this. However, once you get past the inital shock the galaxy is your oyster!

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Hmm...

Well, if you like space, if you are reasonably patient and the opportunity to carve out your little niche, be it as a wealthy trader or a feared pirate, appeals to you then give EVE a try. There's really nothing else like it out there. You can even try it for free for two weeks!

In this trailer, called The Butterly Effect, CCP tries to show you what I've been trying to tell you in this post. Maybe they're better at it than I. Have a look:

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Our cyberific ancestry!

I like this!

From Online Schools by way of io9.

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You can park in my backyard!

I've never actually played the game, but I've always thought the vehicles from Metal Slug look really neat! I love these cool looking models spotted at Treasure Festa, a Japanese toy show! Getting into pulp gaming this is the kind of tanks I'd like to have. Hehe!

Alas, they're custom built and unlikely to turn up on store shelves anytime soon. Sorry to get your hopes up. :)

From Tomopop, via Kotaku.

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Long live Emperor Horus!

My friend Anders recently got the FFG remake of Horus Heresy in the mail and we decided to take it out for a test drive yesterday.

Putting the fortifications in their place.

First off, just like with the recent Runewars, great components! The only thing that could've been better are the fortifications. Again like in Runewars, they're made from vacuformed plastic of a fairly thin and brittle variety, however as long as you're reasonably careful you should have no problems. However, the way they fit into the board could be better and it makes the board rise a bit. I'm actually thinking about making a base for them that's the exakt shape of the hole they're supposed to go through and then simply but them on top of the gameboard. Not only will this prevent the board from rising the forts will also look larger and more imposing. Hehe!

The miniatures are alltogether excellent! I like how the bases are constructed and that you can attach damage tokens to them. Very elegant. And of course, they just beg to get painted!

Me putting the traitor pieces together.

Anyway, I took control of Horus and the traitorous forces, while Anders commanded the Loyalists. I hadn't read through the rules and he had only skimmed them, so the first hour or so we spent with our noses in the rulebook as we slowly started playing. We went with the recommended starter scenario called "Brother against brother" where I had Angron and some World Eaters at Space Port Primus as well as Mortarion and his Death Guard at Eternity Wall Space Port at the start of the game. The loyalists were fairly evenly spread out and mostly concetrated within the actual palace, except for Jaghatai Khan and his White Scars who occupied Librarium Technologicus (hence threatening Angron).

I started out by seeding the Strategic Map with two Drop Pod and two Port Landing orders. The landings were aimed at Space Port Primus while the drop pods were headed for the Lions Gate region in the north east. Then I tried for corruption (turning Imperial Guard and Tank Divisions to my side) and orbital bombardment. It's hard to tell after just one game how lucky or unlucky I was with these. But I did manage to destroy a few units and convert a few others. The important ones being a tank unit at the Lions Gate Space Port as well as the two guard units in the Black Ministry (destroying the Defence Laser there in the process!).

Setup after Corruption and orbital bombardments were completed. Notice how the nearby Titan is almost destroyed and the amount of units that turned traitor (the grey ones with a black base).

I won't go into a blow-by-blow account of the battle, but more of its general flow. I quickly decided that I needed to hold Space Port Primus and made som preemptive strikes at the neighbouring loyalists (destroying two Titans!) and reinforced it from orbit. Anders missed Khans special ability so had a hard time counter-attacking. In the end I had killed the nearby White Scars marines at the Fortress of Truth, and had a fair force inluding both Angron and Magnus the Red at the space port.

This tank division vs guard regiment battle went on for quite a while as neither side managed to get the upper hand. So Anders sent in the nearby Titan which to everyones surprise went down in flames!

At the same time I landed drop pods in the Lions Gate region just east of the Infurnace Factory Complex. Led by Fulgrim this force aimed to take control of Lions Gate spaceport. However, Sanguinius sallied forth from the palace with his Blood Angels and completely massacred the small Death Guard force outside! However, not before the Nurgle followers managed to inflict a plague on the Blood Angels (a special ability on the attack card), killing them to the last man! Only Sanguinius was left standing and seeing Fulgrim and his Emperor's Children on the horizon he decided to move back to the palace.

Fulgrim entered the palace at its easternmost area and prepared for battle. At this point I realised that I held three of the four spaceports needed to win so I started thinking about how to take the last (poorly defended) one. Anders however, seeded two order cards on the palace region and I knew Fulgrim wouldn't be able to withstand a determined assault. Luckily I had the "Interdiction" order card in my hand which allowed me to discard all seeded loyalist order cards in one region! Naturally I used it on the palace region and it basically sealed the fate of the loyalists. The turn after I used a "Lightning Attack" order to move a small force of traitor marines from Space Port Primus to Space Port Damocles by way of Thunderhawk Gunship. They easily tore the lone soldier guarding the place limb from limb and victory was mine!

The final board. You can see Fulgrim and his cronies in the eastern part (left in the picture) of the palace, Angron and some marines to the far south, Mortarion west of the palace and then Magnus the Red in the south west. I don't really know what Anders is pointing at...

My first thought after the game was that there were many mechanics that reminded me of Star Craft. Now, I've only played that game twice, and never really got into it, but in Horus Heresy it feels a bit like they've used similar mechanics (seeding orders and the way battles are fought) but made them more streamlined and, in my eyes at least, better. I really like how you can choose between seeding order cards for benefits but sacrificing speed or simply playing them from your hand but with an added initative cost. It lends itself to planning ahead while not restricting you in as much as I feel it does in Star Craft. My second thought was "Thunderhawks, wooo!" and I know I'll try to use them a lot more in the future. Hehe!

I'm not really sure how enjoyable the game was for Anders as he really didn't have much luck and mostly just reacted to my moves. Sure, the loyalists are supposed to be in a desperate situation and just try to cling on for dear life, but the only time he managed a good counter-attack I murdered him with the cards special ability. Of course, it would have been a completely different game had we remembered that Khan basically works as a flying unit and can attack from afar. Also, had I not managed to interdict Anders' order cards in the palace he probably would have driven off Fulgrim and retaken the Lions Gate Space Port.

In conclusion I think this game has great potential! It's easy without being simplistic and has an enormous strategic depth. I like how limited your actions are so that every order and every unit counts, this really adds to the stories that are told during play! Also it seems to be quick. This was the first time for us and we had basically no idea about the rules and yet we finished in about 2.5 hours. I imagine this being cut down dramatically in our next session. Which I'm very much looking forward to! Especially trying out the opposite side...

That's all for now. Until nex time!

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