Ziterdes Terrain

Watchtower Ruin 'Nalog'; 12009

I have had these pieces for a while now, so thought it was high time to post a few considerations.

I like pre-painted terrain as it frees up time for painting minis (which I am slow enough at, without adding more terrain painting to the mix). I have been amassing a number of bits and pieces and most fall into the category of hard-foam or some kind of resin material. Minis are Pulp City, Anima Tactics and a not-Red Skull for scale reference.

These Ziterdes items are the hard-foam type and feature typical pros and cons.

The pros:
Lightweight
Durable enough for gaming
Easy to modify with sawing (apparently!)

The cons:
Air bubbles - pretty much every hard foam piece I have has this problem
The finish - arguably inferior to what Gale Force Nine does (click for some examples of GF9 terrain I have posted about)

Not sure about this one; OOP piece I think

Price wise I find Ziterdes and Gale Force Nine competitive with each other, even though they don't produce identical pieces by any stretch. The Nalog Ruin is around £30-35 GBP. The second piece is currently OOP I think.

I like the solidity of the material Gale Force Nine uses, which means when it comes to a choice, I will likely go with that over hard-foam alternatives. But despite that, there is some nice stuff out there that can be useful for the time-strapped gamer.

Clayface

Clayface is my second Batman Miniatures Game model completed, and right now I am just painting what I feel like for the game rather than having a view to what I may play with. My main reason is that not yet having played the game, and not yet having a physical rule-book to dive into, I will just build up a small collection of models over the next year or so and see where my painting takes me.

That may make me sound like a Luddite, but I honestly prefer physical hard-copy rule-books to electronic versions, and if I am going to invest my time to game with something, I want to have that in hard-copy. That's just the way I roll, as 'the kids' might say. If Knight Models release hard copy core rules I will buy them; until then I am not too sure that I will game with the minis.

So no BMG gaming imminently on the horizon for me, but as I said I will continue to add more characters to my personal line-up. Right now I have over 30 more BMG/DC Universe/Marvel Universe minis to paint from the Knight Models ranges, so plenty to work on, and inevitably a long-term project.

On the mini itself, let me say that it is a big chunk of metal. While the pricing for the human-size minis for the BMG/DC Universe/Marvel Universe lines is relatively high compared to other skirmish games, I think the big pieces are excellent value given their size, bulk, and weight. Pain in the backside to photograph though!

The metal for this felt better (in other words less soft) when prepping the mini than for the earlier sculpts I have got ready for painting, which is a good thing. The base supplied was a 40 mm which I think was silly. I have kept the model to a 40 mm base simply because I don't want to fudge the game rules for it, but with the mini design, a 50 mm base would have been preferable, because the mini has a tendency to tip towards that outstretched hand. There have been a few minis recently that I feel companies have supplied with 'too small' official bases. Of course I can base them how I like, but as a gamer, I want the bases to be 'game legal' so it is something that bugs me. To my mind, it is about the space the mini occupies on the tabletop; if the bulk of a model so substantively overhangs a base to make getting other models into contact tricky, or if the model is not naturally stable on the base size supplied, then I feel it probably needs to be on a bigger base.

On another note, astute observers may have spotted that I have added 'pages' for the few skirmish games that this blog covers, so just to highlight  little bit more redesign may occur in the next few weeks and months.

Quarter 1 2014 Painting Summary

This was something I did last year, so I can see no reason not to do so again, since I feel it helped me get more models done than the year before. The summary represents my painting across all three of my minis blogs.

While I don't expect to exceed last year's total, I still think it can help motivate me, so here we go with the first quarterly summary for 2014.

In January and March combined, I managed 10 minis; February saw no painting at all.

Top row (l to r); click names for links to posts:

• Type-020: Verrier (Anima Tactics)
• Wildman (Pulp City)
• XII (Anima Tactics)
• Ahriman, Lord of Darkness (Anima Tactics)
• Rayne (Anima Tactics)

Bottom row:

• Arkham (Anima Tactics)
• Primate of Science (Pulp City)
• Kira (Anima Tactics)
• Targeteer (Reaper Chronoscope)
• Type-004: Hellhound/Hellhound (Anima Tactics)

Supersystem 4th edition Kickstarter

Scott Pyle has launched his Kickstarter project for Supersystem 4th edition, which can be found by clicking he graphic.

I just wanted to draw attention to this project. :)

Targeteer

It has a long while since I last painted a 'supers' mini that wasn't either Pulp City or Batman Miniatures Game. more than a year in fact!

This was done quickly as I had not painted anything and needed to get some momentum back, so the relative simplicity of this Reaper Chronoscope mini was a draw to do that. That to getting started on this I was quickly able to paint a couple of Anima Tactics minis too last week, so it was nice to get back on track. Not amazing painting, but quick and done.

I'm not sure of the Reaper pack name for the model, but I call her Targeteer. I imagine her as being related to a  golden age or silver age hero of the same name, perhaps who hung up their spandex, and she in turn has decided to carry on the family tradition with a quiver full of trick arrows when she had to uncover a mystery relating to the disappearance of the original Targeteer.

I plan to use some Reaper Chnronoscope supers for some play-test games for the Pulp City build your own rules when we get deeper into those, as well as maybe games of Supersystem (4th edition goes to Kickstarter very soon) or Power Legions, the variant of the Song of Blades and Heroes system variant for supers games, which I hear may arrive towards the end of this year.
can see myself using the

Across the Dead Earth Kickstarter

The second campaign I have backed this month is Across the Dead Earth (click for link), a project for a minis game set in a post-apocalyptic future Britain where the usual ravaged deserts are eschewed for alternative PA landscaping.

The project is intended to launch the game and its initial raft of models, and is already funded.

Again pledge levels are inexpensive to buy into the game so well worth a look I would say.

World Of Twilight: Travels through Anyaral Kickstarter

I plan to resume painting and posting hobby stuff other than Kickstarters soon (I even picked up my brushes this week and started on a mini to get back into painting after a month-long lay-off), but until those posts happen a long, there are a couple of Kickstarter projects I am backing and wanted to draw attention to.

First up (the second will be in a post tomorrow) is World Of Twilight: Travels through Anyaral (click for link to the project), a project to add new rules and models to the World of Twilight game. I love the models and WoT always has some lovely demo tables at Salute.  Some of the models have a Dark Crystal meets slightly steam-punk fantasy vibe to me, for wont of a better description. The project is funded and has some nice inexpensive pledge levels, so well worth checking out.