Operation: Game Maker

Yes, I know it's been awhile since I've updated. My bad. No excuses, really...just need to be more stalwart in doing it. But, now I have a new project. If you know me or have read my blog, you have inevitably been introduced to my son, Ian.

As he gets older, I thought back to things my father and I used to do together as "projects." Those things in which lessons were taught, knowledge was passed down, etc. For some it was restoring a car. For my dad and I, it was hunting/trapping/fishing.

Now, I'll be completely honest. There was only one of those three activities that I actually enjoyed, which was fishing, but I enjoyed doing them all as they gave me and my father time together. Most that know me know that I'm a geek and was a choir guy in high school, so there was admittedly a bit of a gap between the things that I enjoyed versus what my dad did. But he was always proud of my accomplishments, even if he couldn't relate to the enjoyment I got from it. It was the same with me and hunting/trapping with him, I know it made him happy to have me and my brother there with him, and that was enough.

So I began thinking about what I could do with my son that would be in a similar vein. Luckily, he's a lot like his father in his love of games, so I was thinking about things such as mods for games like Skyrim or Torchlight. With something like this, I could teach some game design lessons and such. For whatever reason, I thought, "Well, we could just make our own game." There are many tools out there to facilitate this, but I wanted something that would be simple enough for him to use. I ran the idea by the wife and she thought it sounded neat. Then I ran it by him and he was ecstatic! He's been really big into RPGs recently, including some of the classic ones, so I decided to go with this:

I remember RPG Maker from waaaaaaay back when, and it's advanced quite a bit. Sure, it's still a top down, party based RPG that you get, but it fits the qualifications for what I wanted in being easy to use. What was really cool, as if it were a sign, is that the makers of the program just launched boxed copy sales of it literally the same day I decided to do this. In addition, it was buy one boxed copy, get one free. Since I needed two, this was great!

So in addition to updating with other stuff, I'll be updating with progress on our game. I expect this to be a long project, so it will likely be years before it's even done. It'll be something we do in between other activities together.

Warmachine 3: GAME ON!

So tonight we played our first real game of Warmachine with the Battlebox armies. I'd played a game with the wife over the weekend, but it was more just trying to learn the ropes a bit better. Tonight, my son and I threw down. He played Khador while I played Menoth.

So, in Warmachine, you have a Warcaster, which is essentially the chess equivalent to the queen and king combined. So they are your most powerful unit, and most important. If they die, you lose. They are what power your Warjacks, which are the big robots. They give them focus (which you'll often see on the table as the glass beads) in order to let them do cool things.

Menoth Warcaster

So, quick timeout. I'm not super happy with how my Menoth guys turned out. They're OK, but could be a lot better. If anything, they actually have given me the drive to continue and learn proper shading that isn't the quick dip method. Now back to the game!

Going over the rules

Each unit in the army has different values for things like movement and attacks. Speed, for instance, is how many inches a unit can move. There are all sorts of things units can do, and if you want to know more about how to play you can check out the quick start rules here:

http://privateerpress.com/files/WarmachineMKII%20Quick%20Start%20Rules%20Front.pdf
http://privateerpress.com/files/Warmachine%20MKII%20Quick%20Start%20Rules%20Back.pdf

From here on out, it's going to be pictures of our game. You'll see who wins at the end.

Armies deployed and ready to play

Ian making sure his setup is good

My initial setup

Ian contemplating his move

Ian moving units forward. RUN!

Moving his warcaster to ensure that they stay within range to give his Warjacks focus

My light warjack up against one of his. I ended up taking out his movement console with a charge attack plus melee attack

Good, up close picture of the fully touched up Khador jack

Rolling to see if he is going to hit

NONE SHALL PASS!!

So yeah, my light warjack is not in a good place after a charge attack from his man-o-war infantry units (not funny, he died after this)

So I took out one of his man-o-war with a ranged area-of-effect attack (think an explosive blast) then decided to roll my warcaster within range to using the spell Cleansing Fire, which /should/ have really hurt the entire infantry unit, as they were clumped up. Yeah, that didn't work, leaving my warcaster out in the open with nothing to do. Oh, and he was within charging range of the man-o-war units. Oops.

High Exemplar Kreoss, wondering if he chose the right direction in life

Apparently not 

And your winner!

Warmachine, Part 2: Painting Khador

So as I mentioned last time, I was priming based on the colors I'd be painting the minis. First up was Khador, since they were colors that were easier to paint than white.

Now, I want to mention again, this is my first attempt at actually painting minis, and I'm also painting to just get them what is considered table ready. Neither of these armies are going to end up being ones that any of my family members use, so perfection is not required here. Just getting something that looked decent was the goal. Oh, and I used cheap paint too. (blasphemy!)

So here is the first Khador jack I painted, but before I'd done any touch up work or the "dip method" (which I will explain in a minute)

And here is the entire Khador army prior to dipping.

Now, dipping is a quick method used to shade minis. While more experienced painters will use a wash to get down into grooves and make the mini "pop" as it were, people like me or those painting a ton of things will use the dip method to do it. To dip, you go buy a can of this:

There are a few ways people do it. Some people take their mini, submerge it in the liquid, then shake it around to get the excess off. Some people attach their mini to a drill to get it off. No, seriously:

Me? I brush it on. You end up with a very glossy mini.

To get rid of the shine, you use some matte finish.

Stay tuned for next time, in which the Protectorate of Menoth warjack takes a mud bath (oops)

Warmachine, Part 2: Assembly and Painting Begin!

First, some bad news. The sand table inserts, despite turning out great, got warped so they don't fit into the table. So I've had to go with a different solution for that. You'll see it later, and no it wasn't the Zuzzy mat.

Anyway, for those unfamiliar with miniature wargames, let me show you what you get.

So, just so were clear, this are individually bagged minis (sometimes they come on sprues that you have to cut them out of), but they aren't put together. You have to do that yourself. Sometimes, it's a bit like getting something from Ikea without having instructions. Luckily, the Warmachine minis are pretty awesome and its evident what you have to do. That doesn't stop it from looking like this when you take them out of the bag though.

So, a little bit of super glue and a couple of hours end up producing the following:

Priming them is the next step in the process. You prime the minis so that paint will better stick to them when you go in to do detail work. You want to prime in colors that make sense for what the base colors of the mini will be.

The first army was Khador. Their colors are darker in nature, as seen by the mini here (not painted by me):

I primed black because of this. If I could have found a red primer, I would have used that, but black will work. It may mean I need to layer on more paint when painting, but that's OK.

To prime them, I put a little bit of tacky stuff on a piece of cardboard (obviously the black one there) and primed each individually. The goal is to do it enough to coat the entire mini, but not so much that it pools and ruins detail. So you want to keep the spray can at least a foot away while spraying too. You'll go through a bit this way, but they turn out good.

The next army was The Protectorate of Menoth. They are more of a white base. (again, not painted by me)

So I primed these guys white.

Yes, I did mess up the bases a bit moving them from the painting cardboard piece to the drying area. Live and learn! I have to do the bases with dirt and fake grass bits anyway, so I'll touch those up then. I'll give the primer a full 24 hours, then the actual painting will commence!

Warmachine Update: Table is done!

So the sand ended up working well, and has now been painted. Only fail was doing it in the basement, as it wasn't well ventilated. That isn't exactly true...It ventilates up into the house, so I'm having to air things out.

Only thing left is to put some straps on the boards so that they can be easily put in and pulled out. then to get decorations for the table.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Warmachine, Part 1.5: Battle Scars!

OUCH!!! Got that trying to scrape excess sand off...but most of it is stuck on, which is exactly what I want! More glue tomorrow, and we'll see how it is after application on Wednesday.

Warmachine, Part 1: Building a Wargaming Table

So this past week I was introduced to Warmachine.

Warmachine is a tabletop minis war game, in which two armies from a fantasy steam punk universe duke it out. As my mom so aptly put it, "Oh, so it's expensive army men." Pretty much...

Well, I'd ordered the Two-player battle box, which comes with enough units to field two small army groups. One for me, one for my son. Kids make a great excuse to get into a new expensive hobby. After all, it's father-son time, though my daughter has already informed me that she wants her own army too. So knowing we'd need an area to play, I went about researching to make a table for us to use.

A standard Warmachine game takes place on a 4'x4' play area. Sure I have two 6'x2' tables in my game room, so I could just put them together, but I wanted a surface that fit on one of the and was the proper size. I went in with a few goals.

1. Spend as little as possible. Serious war gamers may scoff at the notion, but I didn't want to spend a bunch of money as the game could honestly be a bust with my son. I don't foresee that happening, but I also didn't want to spend a ton because it was going to be done as a family project and it's been awhile since I've done any construction.
2. Slightly modular. I didn't want to put the terrain surface directly on the base board as I plan to use this for more than just Warmachine (Wings of Glory and X-Wing, for instance) so I wanted to put a lip around the outside then place tiles inside that had the terrain surface on them instead.

I figure that if the game is a hit, we'll eventually build another table, but for now what we came up with will do.

So this is the wood I bought, most of it was really cheap.

• 1x 4'x4' board for the base
• 2x 2'x2' wafer board for the tiles
• 4x 4"x4'x1" planks to rim the outside of the base (slight mistake here!)
• 1x 1"x8'x1/2" furring strip, cut in half to use as a support

Now, with the planks I purchased, I didn't even think about the fact that I'd end up with corners. I'll have to figure out a good way to fill those in. Anyway, construction is pretty simple.

In between putting this together, we were also getting ready for something else.

We'd be using the glue and the cheap paintbrush to put the sand onto the wafer boards. But first we had to prepare the sand.

Why prep the sand? Well, when you buy sand, it's generally decently wet. Wet sand tends to clump a lot, so we would take a bowl of sand and put it under the hair dryer until it was dry enough to fly everywhere. We figured that was a good indication of dryness. After it was dry, we'd put down a bunch of glue in about a quarter of a board, spread it around, then put the sand on top.

You probably noticed that I lined the wafer boards with duct tape. Since wafer board can be a bit rough around the edges, I decided to line it. Eventually the boards were done and I let them sit overnight to really dry, figuring I'd knock off the excess sand and repeat putting sand down in the morning if necessary.

This was at the end of the night

So after knocking the excess off in the morning, there were multiple spots where the blue hadn't been spread very well so there wasn't any sand. I had used the entire bottle of Elmer's Glue, so I took a 4oz bottle, cut it with water, and tried a different tactic on these parts. Instead of pouring glue, I took the brush and just spread it onto the empty areas. And instead of kind of gently sprinkling the sand on, we just packed it down onto the glue. I have a sinking suspicion that the sand may have actually absorbed some of the watered down glue, but I'll give it a few hours then knock off the excess again. If it ends up being a failure, then I'll chalk it up to a learning experience and get one of these.