The $20, 286 pot paint rack (wall mounted)

  Yep, you heard me.  $20 will get you this 4ft x 2.5ft wall hanging paint rack.  It is bottle agnostic, so you can store GW, Valejo, P3 and any old kinda paint bottle you want. No way, you say.  Yes, way, I say. The key here is laziness and letting someone else do all the hard work for you.  And here is how it's done...

You will need;

• 1 - 2x4 sheet of pegboard (~$9.00 at Lowes or Home Depot)
  
• 33 - 36" 5/16 Dowel rods (The job is way easier if you get 3/16" dowels rods, but they seemed a little too flimsy for me) ($0.59 at Michaels Hobby Supply or $0.79 at Ace Hardware)

Tools you will need;

• Drill (easy) or Drill Press (easier) with 5/16" (or 3/16") drill bit
• Table Saw (easy), band saw (easy), jig saw (harder), hand saw (damn! buy a band saw!)
• Sweat
• spray paint (optional)

Now, follow along with the pictures...

First Look - Space Hulk PC Game

  Yeah, it's here.  The Space Hulk PC Game.  How cool is that?  Here is a first look at the game.

Overall  B+
Graphics - A-
Gameplay - B-
Immersion - A
Learning Curve - A (if you've played Space Hulk Board-game,  B- if not)
Fun Factor - B+
Buy - Yes, if you love the board game, Yes if you are just curious (BA Curious??).  No reason to give it a not buy for any reason.

  Graphically, the game is great.  It has the real feel of the cramped and tight corridors of the Space Hulk.  I have not seen the error/issue that some have reported with marines and Nids walking through walls, but I haven't played through it all.  There is a darkness and fog of war that pervades the game and makes it feel very good.

  Gameplay - Well, the lowest score went here.  Not that there is anything wrong, as far as I have played, it is very faithful to the game and has the same fun value.  There is an issue with animating every genestealer and terminator.  Moves tend to take too long to 'play out'.  At least, you can issue order to all your squad(s) personnel at once, so you can speed it up that way, but there should be an option to just move your guys statically to speed it up.

  All the options you know and love are here, and they all seem to work, but there are a few niggling things that might bug you if you never played the board game.  Quite honestly though, this is a very simple game, just like the board game.

  Immersion is great, you do feel the threat and tension of the board game, and the situation.  There are bugs upon bugs upon bugs and they are scary as hell when they come up in huge groups.  The voice acting is pretty good, but again, it gets a bit repetitive after a while.

  One nice twist is the shoulder cam.  As you order and move your termies around, you get a shoulder eye view of what they are seeing in the upper right corner of the screen.  Really makes you feel like you are in the control room giving orders.  Very nice touch!

  The learning curve is pretty easy, even if you don't do the tutorial missions.  It's not hard to figure out the action points, and what it takes to move and act.  No real "gotchas" in the game.

  Fun Factor... very good.  The game is the board game we all know (and hopefully love).  I'd say it's a must have and for $29.99 on Steam, it's a pretty decent deal.

Enjoy the new game and have a great weekend.  I've been sick all day and I think I'll go sleep... lol

Necrons with Lollipops, or masking with Silly Putty

  Well, not exactly lollipops, but the first time I looked at at this setup, it struck me as a good title.

  A while back I saw a video from Les Bursley on his youtube channel about using silly putty to mask figs and how easy it was.  Well, I had just painted up Nemessor Zhandrek and Vargard Obyron and done a feeble attempt with ghost tints and power weapons, so I wanted to mask that area off before I hit the figs with dullcote (Or in this case, Army Painter Matte finish spray)

  I rolled out the silly putty into a thin sheet with my clay rolling pin and then cut out some sheets;

The new game table - awesome sauce!

  Yep, this is awesome filled with awesome sauce, with awesome sprinkles on the top.

  Ok, maybe that's over the top, a bit.  Or alot.

  You see, I am a wargamer by nature, I mean the cardboard counters on paper map type gamer.(Boardgames... ala GMT Games, Compass games etc.)  My friend, Mark, and I have a regular Wednesday game going on at both our houses.  2 weeks we play at his place, the next two week at mine.  Part of the problem is that we play big, long games, and it chews up real estate in the hobby/game room.

  Well, not long ago, Mark got a spankin new game table from Geek Chic, but that was a little too much green for my tastes.  Grand old table, I must say, but I am a minimalist at heart and my goals were quite a bit different;

• I wanted to build it
• I wanted to steal the idea of the inset table with a topper to save/protect the game in progress
• Under $750
• Had to be 4' x 6' so it would fit my Realm of Battle and other terrain tiles!

  So, the wife and I, with lots of wood tools and a little skill set to designing a game table.   

  When all was said and done, it came in for well under $500 and we actually had fun making it.

  What follows is the picture and text reference of how it went.  Hope you like.

Mysterious Terrain - The Dead Pools

 

  Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates lately, but it was a crazy week.  The big news is that my new gaming table is almost done!  That will be a huge post all by itself, so I shant dwell on that.  I have done a lot of side work though...

• I set up a KanBan board (thanks to Carl at Independent Characters for that one...)
• I started a forest piece (with magnetized trees, more to come)
• I built a crap-ton of Eldar and got some of them primed...
• And I built some mysterious terrain pieces (maybe lethal terrain even!)

  Now, in the spirit of total transparency, I stole this idea directly from Nick at IDICBeer.  He has a GREAT YouTube channel and blog, I recommend you check it out.  He has a ton of great tips and tricks and he is very easy to listen to in the background.  Here are his links;

• Blog - IDICBeer
• YouTube - IDICBeer
• FaceBook - Legion of Gamza

  In his video about lethal terrain, he covers how to make this effect using PVA glue and super glue.  The two have a chemical reaction and the result is very interesting.   The glue looks like it is boiling up after it dries, very cool.  But in his video, he was able to just pour the glue onto the cardboard and it stayed in place.  On my first attempt, I had Elmer's glue all over hell and creation.  I knew I had to change tactics.

  So here is how I changed Nick's idea, just a tad.  I won't say improved, I will just say changed.  here goes.