Saturday 3 June 2017

SMG Side-project...

I have been bitten by the bug of a new side project in recent days, and as any hobbyist knows, that way lies peril as there is never enough time for every project!

I like designing character rules and I like playing games. I also like what Knight Models did to a limited extent with SMG, but lament there wasn't more. The now defunct SMG range extends to 15 officially released minis with cards, plus 2 minis with leaked cards which were never printed (Elektra and Venom).

I started musing and pondering this week, which is what general leads me down the rabbit-hole of a new project, and may be regarded as 'unwise' by the more learned hobbyist....

My idea is simple: create more stuff which I can use for SMG assuming my main opponent agrees to it being used! But any good project needs some boundaries, so I am following these rules:

  1. All minis must have a Knight Models mini as their primary basis to ensure some degree of aesthetic consistency;
  2. Characters should fit within the general street-level-plus milieu already established (so no Thor....at this time);
  3. Characters should reflect the comics as opposed to movies;
  4. I must create a card for each new or re-purposed character.
Now, I already have given myself a slight head-start in the SMG Project, as I have painted Black Panther (shown on the blog last July) and Black Widow already. I set to work adapting a cost schema I obtained from a fellow hobbyist and engineered it so it gave me ball-park near costings on Daredevil and Elektra, using that to inform the costs I assign to new characters as I develop them. 

One of the first examples is the Black Panther card in this post. I tried to encapsulate a classic sense of Black Panther (so omitted the Lord of the Dead stuff). T'Challa has a storied history operating solo in and around New York, and stood in for Daredevil for a while. In the same way that BMG stretches Affiliations (think Cyborg to Batman), I felt his natural home was Spider-man's faction. Expect to see more in my SMG Project in coming months!

15 comments:

  1. A really interesting project, PulpCitizen, and one which many followers of the current "Amazing Spider-Man" comic, would doubtless appreciate. Spidey always works best, imho, as a street-level fighter, not as some omnipotent world-saver, and your decision to strip the minis back to their roots would seem to hark back to that "Bronze Age" period :-)

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    1. That is the plan - bronze age is what I grew up with. :)

      I have been inspired by your recent post to consider the Forgotten Heroes call to arms and have a character in mind; the character has had a Heroclix, but I'll be converting him fully from another mini of a different character. I hope that stays within the spirit of FH! :)

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    2. Hi Pulpcitizen, yep that falls well within the rules (they are pretty flexible anyway TBH). If you do go ahead with this please let me know, probably best through my blog...

      https://rantingsfromunderthewargamestable.wordpress.com/

      And I'll get you up on the FH site..

      https://forgottenheroessite.wordpress.com/

      The full rules are there as well if you want to check you're within them...

      https://forgottenheroessite.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/forgotten-heroes-the-rules/

      Hope to see you there, Cheers Roger.

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    3. Looks like I am in, although I admit to fudging the 28 mm bit in advance.... :)

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  2. Fantastic! I love your black shading!

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  3. What a great idea and great to see Black Panther again, I really liked this one.

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    1. Cheers Michael. :)

      Another copy of this mini will be the basis of my Forgotten Heroes bid....

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  4. You're certainly not wrong with regards to taking on new projects! I do it all the time, and I'm probably one of the worst for not finishing what I've started.

    That said, I truly believe that the life and soul of our hobby is the creativity of it's participants. That's what turned tabletop wargaming into the phenomenon that is Dungeons & Dragons.. Which in turn it could be argued gave us mainstream roleplaying, and everything that's emerged from that.

    They made up some rules to explore a dungeon that was at that time effectively nothing more than a piece of terrain, and a new hobby was born.

    So I say roll with it; as you never know where your ideas will lead you, and what you'll create.

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    1. Cheers Tom. Trying to keep the project limited in scope to some extent as i have so many concurrent unfinished projects underway....

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  5. I agree with the idea of stripping Spidey back to street level roots. Good luck at keeping this *limited*!

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  6. At this scale painting all-black is nigh impossible but you did it and did it well anyway! :)

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  7. Sounds great and whatever gets you painting and playing more games is good to me. I am happy to be a guinea pig. Though I may have to bust out Bane again soon to see what his new rules are like for him.

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    1. Cheers mate. I suspect Bane will give them a pounding with his newly acquired bloody invulnerability! :)

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