Antenociti's Workshop Suburban Office 2 with Upgrade Pack

 Continuing with Antenociti's Workshop recent releases with Suburban Office 2 and the Suburban Office 2 Upgrade Pack. With Scout Celenia for scale from Raging Heroes.

Here we envision Scout Celenia as a Vampire Hunter in a Sci-Fi future setting. 

The Suburban Office 2 has a Sake Shop on the top floor!  This is gonna work out great given how many times I run the "Rescue and/or Steal the booze" scenario.

 As with all of Antenociti's Workshops new building offerings this is pre-painted MDF using  MDF, clear or translucent acrylic and photo print graphics.

The roof features a detachable, multi-position sign and an aircon unit that doubles as a handle for removing the roof to access the gloriously detailed interior.

 As you can see the roof can be removed while leaving the rooftop sign in place.  The sign can be removed for storage or repositioned to any of the double layer MDF tabs on the roof.

The countertop is in the center of the model leaving a lot of space for cramming in a thirsty squad.  I elected to glue the counter in place but there is no downside to leaving it free and completely removable... it could then be used as an outdoor sake kiosk!  Ooops! clever... belated... thought...

 While the individual shop doors are constructed with etched acrylic the other doorways and windows are open.

 With the upgrade pack all of the interior walls are detailed otherwise the buildings are empty shells with a bit more space to fill with troops.

The first floor is occupied by a clothing shop.

 The shop is complete with sales counter and two fitting rooms each with mirror and advertisements.

 The walls are covered with goods on offer or advertisements.

 There is a small learning curve making sure that each part is dry-fitted in the correct spot.  They pop off the sprue easily with the aid of a box cutter or similar.  A bit of light sanding on the non visible surfaces really makes the bits go together more easily.  This time I succeeded in making the doors freely operable... when I built the Neo-Tiki I failed to sand the bottom of the doors and to make sure that they operated freely... as a result they open under some duress and will likely damage the floor eventually... fortunately building them right isn't hard... it just requires a bit of adjustment before they are glued in solid.

The stairs are functional... which is super nice!

I left a large space available for graffiti so more fun tinkering to come!

Back to the desk!

Star Saga Doors

 Ok, I'm reasonably certain this finishes off the Star Saga Kickstarter Wave 1... its always nice to wrap up before the next wave hits but that so rarely happens!

Once I got into the swing of painting these I started thinking about fun times playing Borderlands... and the very cool art style they used for that game.  I ended up painting in that direction...  not quite as exaggerated as the Borderlands stuff but certainly leaning that way.

 I had a lot of help from the decals put out by Thor Miniatures.  These are the best water-slide transfers that I've used in terms of ease of application.  Just a little dip in the water and they are eager to slide off the backing sheet.

These decals are from the District 9 set except the bio scanners on some of the large doors came from a miniature eye set.











A couple of Star Saga minis for scale with the doors.  You can see the color stripes on the doors are the same as the navigation stripe colors on the bases of these models.  I actually used a third color of navigation stripe on a few of the models but elected to limit the doors themselves to two colors.

 The Borderlands theme elements are visible in the gray-green lining and the patchy edge highlights.  There is also a little targeted dry-brush on some of the panels to tie everything together without doing a full up dry-brush.... just adding some texture.

All the doors set up with some game tiles.

I just got a big shipment from Raging Heroes which looks like the final pile of minis from the TGG2 Kickstarter including the super amazing Altar of the Succubi!

I've got a couple of Lust Elves on the painting table at the moment which should get me in the right frame of mind!

Kingdom Death Monster: Getting ready for The Butcher

Continuing the Kingdom Death Monster story... which is timely because I just got notice that Kingdom Death... The Expansions of Death... has shipped!

After a couple of hunts... including a disastrous attempt on a Level 2 White Lion... it's Cunning Mood allows the Monster to kite the party unless they have long, or ranged, weapons... the Lantern year is indicating our first Nemesis Encounter... The Butcher!

Under D'lenn's leadership we've spent our resources as best we could trying to strike a balance between research, gear, and growing the settlement... although there were a couple of glaring inefficiencies that were really the result of our inexperience... which actually is very RPG-esque!  Like... we let the White Lion cub we found during a hunt live... missed out on a pile of resources and ended up getting ambushed by the White Lion anyway... plus the little monster is soon to be a BIG monster and certainly won't extend us the same courtesy!

Dlenn's wardrobe has evolved a bit and she's picked up some bits of Rawhide armor, a drum, and a bone dagger.










My main complaint with the game is the lack of handy reference charts which results in a lot of page flipping through, the admittedly beautiful, rule-book... which does't have much in the way of an index.  But the game is otherwise proving to be highly engaging and has triggered a lot of creativity so, on the whole, it gets an A+.

Rost the Elder... now sometimes known as Rost the Barking Mad due to his insanity level of 26... far, far higher than most of the group which tends fluctuate between 0 and 3, and Dlenn have become a couple and have two children whose eyes are free of ink.








One of the best things this game has done is refresh my pool of ideas for painting.  Because of the way the Survivors grow their technology and gear over the course of the campaign there are a lot of opportunities to represent the growth of the settlement on the models.  For example the endeavor: Pictographs got me to writing some on the various cloth items in the party and the ink that encrusts the eyes of the survivors seems to be a recurring thing even after the first rub of the eyes.  Natives, people born in the settlement. are free of the ink... so there is room for both types of eye treatment.




Insanity is a big deal, and mostly a positive thing no less, so I've taken to making the ink color around the eyes red for the more insane of the group... and am beginning to have the survivors adjust their ink in artistic ways... kind of like variable tattoos around the eyes and elsewhere on the face.

As we are still in the early lantern years the clothing and equipment of the survivors is very limited, and they haven't developed paint yet, so they are recycling the grave shrouds they arrived in and modifying them without getting into dying them yet.  Bone based weapons and rawhide armor are scattered throughout the group.  They've actually got some White Lion based Gear but that will show up on the next batch of minis.










The Butcher is the first nemesis encounter and seems to be some psycho that collects faces, wraps them round the victim's lantern and hangs them on his gear as he travels round from settlement to settlement collecting his grisly toll.  But... since this guy comes back from time to time even if you kill him... he is either some kind of immortal or there is a Butcher tribe out there somewhere.

 The Butcher isn't my favorite Kingdom Death model, and is a bit fussy to assemble, but it does have some very interesting details that might illuminate some of the mysteries of the setting.

 For example... the lanterns he carries are of several different designs while the survivors only seem to have one design... this implies that the lantern design is either unique to to a settlement region or that the Butchers are hunting things other than the Survivors we know about that also carry lanterns and have humanoid faces... The butcher also has a much higher tech level than the survivors and is sporting some sort of metallic armor and weapons.  I've treated this as blued steel (to my mind meteoric iron).  I'm curious to see what this guy's loot deck looks like... assuming that we beat the monster!

 This batch of Survivors is mounted on the stone face inserts.  The stone faces are interesting because they seem to be renewed from time to time and the Survivors have caught glimpses of some kind of creature that seems to be doing that.

Fam is an example of a full unarmored kit build.

 The bases were painted with Secret Weapon washes (Sewer Water, Algae, and Green Black) over Dirty Bone (Reaper) and then brushed up with Graveyard Bone (Reaper).  Some mild OSL was done based around a mix of Pale Saffron and Splintered Bone.

Mara is an example of the full Rawhide kit... sans the shoulder cover which does not accommodate some of the hair styles.  Dlenn  is wearing the Rawhide body with the shoulder and an unarmored leg.

 The kits mix and match fairly well.  Titus is a mix of Unarmored and Rawhide... as well as the optional Bone Helm.  The bone weapons and gear are part of the Rawhide Kit.

Kingdom Death Monster: Playing the Prologue

 We played our first Game of Kingdom Death Monster and it was a lot of fun! 

The game components and the treatment of the Monsters is, in a word, lavish.

After getting set up for the first game, which took a while due to a plethora of one time only tasks like setting up the absolutely essential components organizer, we dove into the first showdown: The White Lion.

We named our starting survivors: Jahira (curly red head), Dlenn (ash blonde), Rost the Elder (Old guy with beard), and Samael (suave guy with blue/black hair).

Having awakened into a strange reality, on a floor of stone faces with nothing but a bit of cloth and a mysterious lantern, the survivors are immediately set upon by the monstrous White Lion. They scramble for position and acquire weapons in the form of broken bits of the ubiquitous stone faces... this is the Founding Stone.

Our survivors set up in two groups with the idea that the monster would attack one and the second group would come to their aid.  Great in theory but tricky in practice.

The monster headed over to the women and attacked Jahira.  She was extraordinarily lucky that the monster missed one attack and the second attack landed on the only area that she had any protection.

It turned out that the men were out of position and could not make it to the monster to help so the women moved toward them after Jahira made a desperate, but vain, stab at the beast.

 The men moved up and the monster engaged them. The women came to the aid of the men and Jahira scores first blood on the beast.

This is when we began to understand the combat mechanisms.

 The game's AI works really well.  The AI deck for each encounter is constructed from a large pool of cards.  The number of cards varies with the difficulty of the encounter, is unique to the monster, insures that each encounter is different (sometimes radically so) and serves simultaneously as the action and health pools.  Basically as the monster takes woulds its available actions are also reduced.

 The combat is very dynamic and there is a lot of movement of miniatures.  Tactically its very interesting and requires the players to learn how the monster is likely to react and coordinate their attacks to take advantage of the monster and predict its movements to bring numbers to bear.  The monster itself is very powerful and the survivors must make good choices to fight it.

Luck helps as well!

 Here Dlenn sets up the White Lion by anticipating the AI targeting priority.  She stabs the White Lion in the face, getting a crit which allows her to shear off the White Lion's "Glorious Mane" (a valuable resource as well as a chance to permanently increase the strength of the survivor... Dlenn was not insane at this point and missed out on the strength upgrade) and then runs away... toward the other survivors... getting isolated by the monster is very... very ... bad.

Unfortunately the AI knows this as well...

Samael moves to the rear of the monster and lands an attack... except that its actually a ploy by the monster... who now has Samael right where he wants him!

The "Clever Ploy" is in the hit location deck and also reshuffles the Hit location deck once played... to include the Clever Ploy itself.  Shuffle the deck well... nothing is quite as frustrating as having that evil card popping right back up!

 As a result of the Clever Ploy the White Lion grasps Samael and drags him away from the group to isolate him... doing grave damage to him in the process.  He is permanently made unable to use "survival" which is an essential skill to ... well.. surviving...

The White Lion Enrages on its activation... which does not bode well for our survivors.

With the mauled Samael down for the moment the White Lion returns to the fray and the damage begins to pile up on the survivors. They don't really have any protection to speak of and, fortunately, the damage tended to be broadly distributed.

The survivors are also beginning to understand that many attacks, if unsuccessful, cause the monster to move away from the attacker making unresolved hits null.  Its important to resolve attacks in a smart order and anticipate the results of failure.

 The turning point for our survivors... Jahira attacks the monster getting the "Fuzzy Groin" hit location... as the card describes it..."you hit the monster right in the ding dong."

She also rolls a lantern (crit) for damage!  This gives the monster the persistent injury "Lost Ding Dong" which really... really... really.. gets it angry.  The monster is livid, gains +1 damage which hurts a lot) and Jahira permanently gains the "Priority Target" token... the White Lion will attack her until she is dead!

The angry and enrage stack... which means the monster's hits are doing severer damage with every successful strike... with the monster needing 2+ on a d10 to hit... this fight needs to end soon. 

Dishing this kind of damage the monster quickly kills Jahira... the primary focus of it's ire and briefly loses its enraged status. 

Fortunately the monster is really beat up by this point and has few AI options remaining. This also means that it re-enrages immediately an remains in that state until the bitter end.








After a furious chase around the table Dlenn wounds the monster removing its last AI card.
The monster responds with its basic behavior which slaps Dlenn in the head for severe damage...  blinding her in one eye and leaving her prone before the beast...

Samael then sacrifices his founding stone and flings it at the monster scoring the killing blow and saving Dlenn!

What a fight!



The survivors then wander about and find a strange glowing column called "The Lantern Hoard". They understand it to be a safe area and, with with the other survivors that have also found their way to this spot, found their settlement here.

We entered into the settlement phase and determined the population, gender mix, spent resources building a Skinnery, a Bonesmith, and an Organ Grinder.  Dlenn emerges as the leader of the settlement and gains +1 Courage. They spent Innovations established some of their moral codes.. the first one is the Death Principle where they must decide what to do with their dead.  Do they Cannibalize or Bury? We chose Burial but that may have some long term complications given the limited food supply... we'll see.  They also developed Language and Consequences of Language which generates the core of the Innovations deck.  They then crafted armor and weapons and , with resources running low prepared to depart to hunt another White Lion.

It was late by this time so we called it a night.  I've got some reading to do and some idea what I need to paint up next for the campaign.  I expect some alternate survivors, some survivors in hide armor, and a Butcher.

There is still a lot to learn about the game but it seems like it'll be fun along the way.

Kingdom Death Monster Prologue

We're getting ready for our first game of Kingdom Death Monster 1.5!

The presentation of the rules is very cool.. lots of space devoted to art and stories.  I'm treating this project as an exploration and haven't done my usual research on the game.  The plan is to treat it as a story and just see how it unfolds... learning the game and the lore as we go.

 The opening is called the Prologue and, conveniently, the miniature sprue was labeled as such... although there appears to be another model on the sprue that looks like some kind of barbarian butcher... but I'll sort that as we come to it.

The group of four survivors is very elegant.  Simple designs with great lines and character.  Toward the end of painting this group I realized that the rock each of them are holding (The Founding Stone) is actually a fragment of, what appears to be, a floor of stone faces.

In retrospect I probably should have used those stone face floor inserts for the starting group.  I actually painted up one to use with The Kingsman but treated the faces as though they were living... or recently deceased.

The shrouds remind me of funerary shrouds and, so far, the game seems to be a survival action RPG set in Purgatory... that is just a guess but I decided to treat the clothing as coarse linen shrouds.

Each starting survivor has the bit of cloth, a Founding Stone, and a Lantern.  The Lantern seems to be a big deal, and a major theme throughout the game,  which further leads me to suspect the setting to be Purgatory.

We'll see soon enough... I may be completely wrong but its a great new adventure!



The White Lion is the adversary for the first encounter.  Even though this White Lion isn't anatomically a terrestrial lion I took some advice and had a look at some photos and paintings of actual lions before painting.  It was a great idea and reminded me to include some details about the face markings, nose shape and color, and maine colors etc...

This lead to one of the first challenges... Lions tend to have a white mask, almost beard shaped, which I really wanted to include.  The trick was I also wanted the lion to be "white" as its name implied.  I went with the Menoth White Base (P3) for the main body and face (spot shaded with Seraphim Sepia (GW)) and Splintered Bone (Reaper) for the mask.

The shark-like teeth were and oddly hand-like paws underscores that this is not only a powerful predator... but an actual, and quite unnatural, monster!

Anyway... I'm off to set-up for the game!
I'll let you know how it turns out.

Dark Souls the Board Game Boss: Dancer of the Boreal Valley

The Dancer of the Boreal Valley is the third Boss from the core game  painted.  Leaving only three figures to complete the core game paint project.

There is a lot of experimentation on this model.

The Armor was sprayed Krylon Bronze the details were relatively shallow so the armor was black lined to add depth then highlighted with Citadel Shining Gold (a very pale metallic gold)  and washed with Seraphim Sepia.

 The Cloak was an experiment in red.  I'm still refining it but the result was an interesting enough surface in its own right before adding the freehand about halfway through the red build up.

I'm torn between calling this "The Babble Cloak" or the "Cape of Incoherence"  The free hand started out as some patterns that resemble, but are not actually, a  script. Then some larger characters, and some that are not quite actual characters but could almost be several characters. Basically its nonsense... which is kind of what I felt about some of the game rules at the time!

Adding the freehand midway through the red build up resulted in some partially buried lines which was a desired effect.

The freehand was an experiment with cool highlights and warm highlights.  The characters are lines with a bright orange in warmer zones and with a pink in cooler zones or shadows.  The goal was to make the freehand mildly 3D in the top (warm) zones and to get it to stand out legibly in the shadowed (cool) regions.

I'm getting interested in shadowed highlights, and it needs a lot more work, but I learned a lot and I'll refine it as I go.









The white areas were Graveyard Earth (Reaper) over the Krylon Bronze, layered with Splintered Bone (Reaper) shaded with a very dilute (50-50 Shader and Glaze Medium (Vallejo)) Military Shader (Army Painter).



For size the Herald faces off against the Dancer... this may not end well..

Next up are the Centaurs!

I'm continuing to work on warm and cool highlights with them which is giving a some really interesting Light and Darkness interactions.

Vending machines and mail boxes scatter/objective markers

  Scatter really brings life to a table and a game.  I decided to work on some Vending Machines and mailboxes I got from Armor Cast about a year ago.  It then occurred to me that they might also make really good objective markers so I also numbered them on the bottom.  I can just see it now... the Dark Eldar fighting desperately for the Soda Machine!

 The mailboxes have a symbol (stylized arrow) that I cooked up to be the logo for the Kurganov Postal Service, or the Imperial Post..  Kind of still chewing those over so there ya are... a logo but missing the national emblem.  I left space for Imperial Eagles and am leaning in that direction. 






Typical from Armor Cast the resin had a fairly large number of bubbles but most of that occurred on the back of the vending machines and a bit in the snack items themselves.  Nonetheless they cleaned up well and took paint readily.  I really like the snack machines varied inventory.

 As usual the drink Machines became ZoT dispensers! "If its Hot grab a ZoT!"  I see ZoT as the signature drink of my Jailbirds... an energy drink with a big kick! Drink ICE COLD! for maximum effect!

 The snack company is L&R Snacks non-stop.

 "Loud & Ragin' --- Coyote Style!" Non Stop snacks for every mission!

That is some essential Coyote Crew food!



The name is, of course, a nod to Raging Heroes and the Toughest Girls of the Galaxy!

I failed to do before and after shots... ack!  I just grabbed some stuff and started painting!




I'm pretty happy with these machines and boxes and will have to keep an eye out for more in the same vein.