Hobby progress during 2024

Needless to say, I didn't achieve my goals of 2023. That's not to say I didn't make progress with various hobby projects.

• Zona Alfa: I painted one additional stalker in hazmat gear. The figure actually comes from an old ESCI "Warsaw Pact" set. However, I painted him with colors resembling the title character from Argentina's classic scifi story "el Eternauta".

Hazmat "stalker"

Here's the resemblance to the Eternauta: 

Juan Salvo, aka "el Eternauta", as invented
by Oesterheld and drawn by Solano López

Group pic of all the stalkers so far.

• Five Leaguers from the Borderlands, Zombicide Black Plague, and fantasy in general:

It's a law of Fantasy that every adventure must start in an inn:

"Stranger! Have you heard the latest rumors?"
(Sculpt by Lionel Crespo of KZK Minis)

A catfolk (Reaper Minis) heeds the call to adventure!

Unfortunately, the local wildlife has other
 plans for the innkeeper...

These raptors lack feathers and are not accurate to current
paleontological findings, but I like them! They are from the
WizKids Deep Cuts line, and were painted almost entirely
with Speed Paints.

Can Baldric the Wizard and Morrigan the (good?) Dark Elf from Zombicide Black Plague save the day?

Baldric from Zombicide Black Plague.

Morrigan from the Wulfsburg expansion.

• Blackstone Fortress & scifi in general:

Group photo of spindle drones and ur-ghuls.
I actually painted all drones and ghuls.

The heroes are barely started, except Dahyak Grekh (Kroot) and UR-025 who are finished. I think the Traitor Guard are going to be very interesting as generic scifi baddies, as will the Cultists of the Abyss.

I have a crew for Space Station Zero, all primed and ready to be painted.

• My own games: nada. 

 

 

The best laid plans...

I ambitiously set out to make progress on multiple projects during 2023.

I... failed? I don't know if I'd say so. I certainly neglected many of the planned projects, though I did paint some things I'm proud of. Let's see.

• Pulp Alley: zero.

• Zona Alfa: I painted some stalkers! I'm proud of these, considering they are 1:72 scale.

These are more like assorted ruffians, but whatever!

• Exploit Zero: nada.

• Five Leagues: really minor progress, nothing to show here.

• Space Station Zero: nope.

• My own games: oh no.

However... I made unexpected progress with a game I wasn't planning on tackling this year: Zombicide Black Plague. The minis are really characterful and paint up well.

Tough gals Ann the Nun and Nelly the barmaid, ready to chop some zombie heads!

I confess I used the tutorials from the wonderful Sorastro as a starting point, though I heavily simplified the process.

Abomination angry. Abomination smash!

Awww, a Wolfbomination with her cute puppies.

So what about my other projects?

Well, I intend to paint a couple more stalkers for Zona Alfa, then some ghouls/zombies for them to shoot up. 

I bought myself some fantastic Ooh-Rah scifi marines from Wargames Atlantic, as well as some US Marines from Rubicon's Vietnam range, along with the stalwart guerrillas of the Viet Cong and also a box of North Vietnamese Army. Maybe it's time to tackle my project We Gotta Get Out of this Place?

Hobby projects for 2023

Like many other hobbyists, I have way too many projects going on inside my mind, and too little free time to actually complete them. With that in mind, these are my top projects, or at least the things I would like to make some progress in during 2023:

• Pulp Alley: this is a cool fast-play skirmish game with a default "pulp" setting. I own the core game and the Tomb of the Serpent campaign, which can be played solo. The biggest impediment in this project, besides building and painting minis and terrain, is printing and gluing the custom decks of cards. I like the idea of custom cards but I really abhor actually constructing them.

A deranged cultist in service of the Serpent God.

• Zona Alfa / Kontraband: I already own all the minis I need: stalkers, soldiers, zombies, and assorted Soviet vehicles. I really need to get on with the painting. No assembly needed, these are 1:72 pre-assembled minis.

Crew of stalkers for Zona Alfa / Kontraband.

• Exploit Zero: I want to play a game of this fun cyberpunk action game. I also have all the toys I need: various Necromunda for gangsters and Agents, 40K and Stargrave for H-SEC. I just need to build and paint them.

You don't want to live in the future.

• Five Leagues from the Borderlands: I want to finish my party for this fantasy solo/coop skirmish game. I sound like a broken record by now, but once again, I have all the minis I need. I just need to paint them and also build suitable terrain. I built a single house, which I've shown in this blog.

A line of candidates applying for the adventurer job.

• Space Station Zero: I want to play at least one scenario. This is a very low model count game, so it should be doable. And you guessed it: I just have to paint the minis!

A mysterious space station to explore.

• My own design: make progress with We Gotta Get Out of this Place, a squad of soldiers trying to survive their tour of duty. Initially I had 'Nam as the setting, now thinking of converting this to scifi (I really like the Ooh Rah near-future soldiers by Wargames Atlantic for this).

Yeah, you get the hell out of that country.

• My own design, part II: create a battalion level mech/scifi wargame. Each base a platoon of infantry, individually based big stompy mechs, potential for solo play. No title for this project yet.

I don't expect to accomplish all of this by the end of the year, but some progress would be nice. And at least one game of any of the above would be super nice!

Creating a scratchbuilt fantasy house

My fantasy adventures with Five Leagues from the Borderlands will require some scenery and terrain, of which I currently have none. Some people choose to buy ready-made buildings or 3D-print them, but I won't. I'm always attracted to kitbashing and scratch-building, so I'll build my own scenery.

An essential piece of scenery in any fantasy town is a house, so I built one out of coffee stirrers, corrugated cardboard, plastic card, straws, and assorted bits and pieces. 

A fantasy town house. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I quite like how my house turned out. I can see a whole fantasy town populated by buildings in this style, maybe with an inn and a church. I would have to streamline my painting process though, because it took longer than I wished.

In case you're curious about intermediate steps, here are some of them. I built the house to be disassembled in two sections, the lower and upper floors, for easy storage. 

The house can be disassembled for storage.

I cut and glued each tile individually, making sure it wasn't perfect and some were purposefully misaligned; it looks better in the finished house. This was very time-consuming but I think it paid off.

The tiles were cut and glued individually.

I then coated everything with mod podge before painting, to strengthen the cardboard and prevent it from soaking up too much paint. Then I washed the whole thing with a home-made wash (based partly on Black Magic Craft's recipe, which uses Liquitex inks) and drybrushed to taste.

Aside from adding more buildings to my fantasy town, I'm now thinking of more ambitious future projects, like maybe a wizard's tower and some sections of a castle wall!

Solo gaming: Five Leagues from the Borderlands

I simply wouldn't be me if I wasn't juggling a dozen different hobby projects at the same time.

Solo tabletop gaming has always appealed to me, even before the COVID19 pandemic, which is when many other tabletop gamers discovered it. Simply put, solo -- or solitaire -- gaming means playing a tabletop game by yourself, trying to beat the scenarios and/or the rules of the game. This often requires some sort of "A.I." or rules to play "the scenario" which you must beat; they are sometimes complex, sometimes relatively simple, sometimes extremely mechanistic and sometimes leaving many details to the interpretation of the player.

For some players it became a necessity during the pandemic, when social gatherings were curtailed; it was a way -- the only way, for many -- to get their tabletop fix. I however always found solo gaming appealing, possibly because I never enjoyed going to clubs to play games with strangers, or because my friends are too busy to play with me, or simply because I'm interested in games that nobody else is.

Five Leagues from the Borderlands, a solo/coop fantasy skirmish game.
Those giant spiders don't look too friendly!

The overriding rule of solo gaming seems to be: cheating is not really possible. You cannot spoil anybody's fun but yourself. So try to have fun, experiment with things, and house rules are always welcome if they enhance the game.

One common variant of solo games is cooperative or "coop" games, which are a bit more social: you and a bunch of friends all play on the same side, trying to beat the scenario. Some games of this type are Games Workshop's Blackstone Fortress, Rangers of Shadow Deep or Zona Alfa/Kontraband, which I've already mentioned in this blog.

A solo/coop scifi game set in the Warhammer 40K universe.
Beautiful components, but I still have to paint most of the models... 

I did paint two of them though! The robot and the Kroot explorers.

I'm ashamed to admit I own many of these games, including but not limited to the three games mentioned above. However, I've recently bought Five Leagues from the Borderlands (called by its fans "5L" for short), a solo skirmish game set in a generic low fantasy and gritty world, which you can tailor to suit your own opinion of what such a world should be like. Or simply copy your favorite fictional world, of course.

So what's appealing about it? For starters, this is a relatively low model count game, which suits me just fine because I don't have much time to paint lots of models. But also, Five Leagues has a terrific campaign system. This game isn't just about fighting battles, but also about telling the story of your little band of fantasy warriors, going from town to town like Kwai Chang Caine, assisting people, finding unexpected travel companions, solving mysteries and keeping dark threats from overrunning the land. The rules even encourage you to draw a map of your campaign! The vibe of this rulebook reminds me a lot of the Grudgebringers from Warhammer's Dark Omen and Shadow of the Horned Rat. 

The vibe of 5L reminds me a lot of the Grudgebringers!

I'm thrilled.

Now, on to the eternal problem: to start a new campaign you must pick 4 heroes, one of which will be your Avatar -- i.e. the leader of the band and your representation in the game -- and also 2 followers, lesser companions who have joined your band for coin and glory. Already I'm fretting about which are the coolest models to pick from my vast collection, and whether I'll be able to paint them all.

Also, what to pick as enemies? Bandits? Skaven? Skeletons? Goblins...? 

I've started gathering candidates for the band, but I have too many and will be forced to make some hard decisions.

The candidates. Hopefully I'll be able to pick 6 and paint them!

More vehicles for Zona Alfa: a BTR-80

Here's another Soviet vehicle for Zona Alfa or maybe some Cold War wargaming, this time an APC: a BTR-80 in 1:72 scale.

I assembled and painted this Trumpeter kit about a year or so ago, and was actually quite proud of it. But that was before I discovered the wonderful work of such YouTube hobbyists and tank specialists as Night Shift, Panzermeister36 or PLASMO. Seriously, if you're in any way interested in painting eye-popping tanks, go learn from these guys.

I thought this counted as "weathering"...

...but Martin Kovack A.K.A. "Uncle Night Shift" has taught me better!

Now I'm a little ashamed of my BTR. I will probably re-do it, or at least fix it with better weathering, pin-washing and panel lining, and anything else I get the inspiration to do.

Of course, any excuse to paint more weathered Soviet-era vehicles is always welcome. That's why I already have on my workbench a BMP-1, and I'm eyeing some MAZ truck kits...

A tank as scenery for Zona Alfa

Zona Alfa and similar skirmish games are not a good fit for "on table" vehicles. Vehicles need room for maneuver, which a 90x90cm table doesn't have -- not for scales 1:72 or 28mm, anyway. Trying to actually use vehicles on such a small table leads to the ridiculous "tank parking lot" problem.

However, I still need an excuse to paint cool stuff like Cold War era tanks and armored vehicles. Zona Alfa recommends using them as scenery; essentially, objective markers or obstacles that block line of vision. A rusty abandoned tank can be the last known location of a convoy which was rumored to have been carrying top secret equipment. Or it can be an abandoned piece of hardware which happens to be the location of a reality-distorting anomaly!

Anyway, here's a low quality ESCI T-62 Russian tank I'm working on. It's currently primed green, without any additional work. I'm planning on adding stowage, battle damage and rust... lots of rust.

Partially assembled bits.

Assembled.

Primed green. Ready for battle damage and rust effects!