Goblin Clan Games - Great Deal

A while ago, I picked up some Goblin Clan Skeletons and Lizard Men. They are 3d printed figures at a good price. I am a sucker for Lizardmen and Skeletons.

This batch of Skeletons shows off 6 poses without duplication. 

The same for the melee/swordmen Skeletons, except these show off the detail of weapons and armor. They are great for 3d prints. 

The final image is of the Lizardmen, with slightly less detail than the Skeletons only because they wear less armor. Cold-blooded creatures wear less armor because they need to sun frequently. Or so I tell myself. 

These figures are advertised as 28 to 32 mm. I personally use 25 and 15mm, but these make excellent tokens and showpieces. I am sure none of my players will object to a slightly large piece on the table. They also have a nice range of figures suitable for player characters, which match these perfectly. Maybe I need to upscale and upgrade? 

Anyway, right now Goblin Clan Games is running two different promos, 30% off and free shipping on orders over $35.00. No code or link is required. Now is the time to check them out. 

For me, now is the time to get paint. I really should have painted them a while ago. These look like fun and I the larger scale will help me practice my pitiful painting skills. That skill has wildly atrophied over the years and I want it back. Time to rank up.

Goblin Clan Miniatures (Formerly 3DMakerWorks)

They came on Friday! 

The amount of detail on these figures is incredible and because they are 3d printed, they don't have a bit of flash like metal figures. I swore one of the skeletons had a bit of something sticking off his neck at an odd angle, but when I looked closer, it was an axe lodged in his armor. That's cool! 

I was expecting some sort of lines as an artifact of printing, and it is there, but it's super fine. It looks like a pattern on the figures. It looks like a pattern on the figures. I don't see any point in trying to remove it. A bit of paint will probably completely cover it. I suspect that a simple wash would make it more evident, but we will see. 

As you can see from the photos, these figures are large. Way bigger than 28 mm. They border on being "model sized". If I was trying to make a 28 mm army, I'd object. But these are for D&D, and monsters are notoriously "not to scale". The bases are almost exactly 1", so for 1"=5 feet on a game surface, these are perfect. In the picture above, the building in the background is an in-between scale, good for 25 mm or 15 mm so I am not exacting in my scale anyway. "Looks good" is better than "in scale". 

I wouldn't call these minis "unbreakable", but they feel tough. The material does feel like you could break it with a tool, so modification would be difficult. However, a random drop off the table probably wouldn't hurt them. Each package of figures came with multiple poses. 

Speaking of "modification", there probably isn't any point. The 6 Archer Skeletons came in 3 poses, while the 7 Melee Skeletons have 7 different poses as did the Lizardmen. And these poses are not your typical mini "poses" with a leg or an arm moved. Each is a different sculpt, but share common details so obviously they are from the same theme or group.  

All and all, I'd give these 5 of 5 stars. I can't wait to start painting.  

Stop Being Crazy In There!

Chaos Star

As you can tell from the frequency of posts, I have a lot of insanity going on. Where to begin? 

I'm teaching online classes all this week while trying to get my classroom up to NYSED standards. Social distancing for special edu students and all that jazz. Plus there is a ventilation standard, which is wholly dependent on a building inspection that no one at the school has any control of. I don't know what kind of HVAC we have... But that's not all, we have a mandated break starting next Monday which lasts until the first-day summer school could start. So, I might be doing a lot of work for not much benefit. And that's not all... We are taking in new students, who really want to be correctly placed in a quality school by the summer session, which means no one is assured of that mandated break. No pressure! 

In more minor news, the screen door latch fell off my front door and there are no replacements anywhere in the City of Buffalo. WTH? I had to order one online. I'm now checking USPS tracking like an eBay fanatic. In the meantime, we can't use our front door, even to check the mail... 

Anyway, I just want to post a reiteration that if you would like a link, a review, or whatever, go ahead and contact me at phil<zot :)>viverito at gmail<dot>com or leave me a note in the comments or contact me via mewe.com or facebook. I'm always happy to link share. 

At some point last week I had a spammer come in and drop a link. It doesn't happen that often but the person was an total asshat about it. What is really rotten about the whole thing is, he was promoting a product that pertains to my website and looks super cool. This isn't like the guy that tried to link his consignment store to my series called 52 Weeks of Magic, as if the items in his shop were real magic items. This product is actually way better than that and it is linked to another product I am ridiculously happy with. 

The name of the company is 3dMakerWorks.com and like the name implies, they produce 3d printed miniatures. The designs are by Fat Goblin Games, who is a great content producer on DriveThruRPG among other places. I purchased some clipart from them but then found it didn't match my setting, so now it's hanging on my wall as a great D&D themed piece of art. Great stuff. 

Anyway, what about these minis? 3dMakerworks.com has dozens of minis for sale. They look great for any D&D campaign. In perusing the link the spammer left, I thought, "Gee, I haven't ordered figures in a while." $30 later, I have an order for 7 Lizardfolk Warriors, 7 Ranged Skeletons, and 8 Melee Skeletons. 

(Jan 2023 update, all of the links are dead, so I removed them. Sorry.) 

Hmm... Damn it! I fell for the spam!

Update on Dad's Crusader Era Castle

I have second video of Dad's Crusader Castle. He wanted to demonstrate how easy the thing is to move.

The entire thing is modular, not in the sense of you can put it together in random ways, but in the way that you can take it down for transport and storage. It's actually 5 different parts which slide together. He's ingenious like that.

I'm still working on a basic Keep, but it's weeks away from being done.

Anyway, I am trying to get Dad to make a Youtube channel of this stuff.

Second Image Batch - British Cav and Support Units

This is the second in a series of posts. This time, we are looking at a series of 15mm British figures and associated support units. These figures must be from several different manufacturers as some seem "fatter" than others. The first image demonstrates this difference well. 



Tomorrow, I will update with the infantry.

Go, Dad, Go - Completed Crusader Era Castle

A few weeks ago, I posted an image series of my Dad's work on a Crusader era castle. It's all done. Check out the video the view below. 

You can follow him over on Facebook.

First Image Batch - Zulus

I thought I would have a lot to say about these minis but apparently the ol' grey matter is going soft. I painted these up over the past couple of years. My dad's friend Mike gave me a base set of painted figures to get me started at playing The Sword and The Flame. I loved it.

Many years ago, I could have told you a story about each and every figure and unit, but all of that is gone now. I will have to refresh myself. I can't even tell you what manufacturer. They are 15 mm. That's about all I remember. 

In reality, my dad's friend, Moko was running a series of home brew games which featured these figures plus a zillion of his. Moko was one of the Jogglers and he was an extreme gamer and made up his own scenarios and mini-games on the fly it seemed. He played fantasy, ancient historical, Tractics, StarFire, modern, WWII submarine warfare and on and on.

I'm only going to post a couple of images, since I don't have much information to share. And I am not a great photographer. I'm also not the best painter and while I know some research was done, the data is gone from the brain bank.

Game Review - G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.: Glorious Adventures in Science Loosely Involving Generally Historical Times

Title:  G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.: Glorious Adventures in Science Loosely involving Generally Historical Times
Author: Christopher Palmer and John R. "Buck" Surdu
Rule Set: G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.
Year: 1984
Pages: 36
Number of Players: 2+
Rating: ★★★★★

I stumbled across this 2000 printing of  G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., a game of Victoria hi-jinx. On the first reading, it strikes me as a Victorian era Striker game. You create your hero, his extras, etc. and then go off to encounter something. It could be just like Chainmail with a few differences.

It's decidedly different. You'd think that the rules revolve around the hero but you'd be wrong. All that nonsense stops at page 7 when you get to design vehicles. The meat of the system revolves around modular system to create vehicles, monsters, and other contraptions right of the serials of the 1860s. It's nuts! Steampowered villains against dragoons and kung-fu powered fighters? Go for it!

I love it.

Now for this game, you'll want oodles and oodles of minis. It'd be expensive, except the rules seem to assume that you obtained your kit from the 99 cent store. Bags of dinosaurs, robots, spaceships, cars, tanks and those weird erector set want-a-be things from Dollar Tree would do nicely. You can match your designs to your minis which is awesome.

Once you have designed and assembled your minions, you need to build a deck of cards. This feature reminds me of The Sword and The Flame. The deck controls who goes when. Nerve racking. The system proceeds down the order of battle: card draw, morale, shooting/throwing, move, reload, lather, rinse, repeat.

The rules are simple, because things get hectic fast.
While I have reviewed the original set here on These Old Games, you can obtain a completely updated set over at DriveThruRPG. The Compendium runs 190 pages, which is quiet an update from 36. If you want the 36 page set, check out Amazon. (It lists 40 pages, which includes the covers, and the inside covers which are also packed with information. I went by the actual numbered pages.)

You should check out Buck's webpage. It's old school awesome.

Oh, G-d damn. It's always the scale and basing with you people. Movement for infantry 6" and for cavalry is 12". Looks like HO, 28 mm, 1/72, 1/76 or something like that. Formations are wavy lines and blobs, so basing doesn't matter except perhaps for one figure per base.

What I do on Sunday... Achieve!

I'm in cleaning mode. Well, my wife is in cleaning mode for the holidays. She is also a good photographer and has a nice camera. She has promised that I can borrow her camera, if I get all of the Christmas stuff upstairs and do some laundry.

Deal.

What do I need the camera for? Two semesters ago, I had to put together a video for a class project. I decided to cover the Battle of Rorke's Drift using minis I had on hand. Being me, I couldn't just do a PowerPoint, it was stop motion all the way.

Proof of concept video

Oh, but I couldn't stop there. I wanted actual students to participate. So I nervously packed up all of my figures and terrain and brought them into my 6:1:3 classroom. I have to say, my staff really didn't understand what was happening, but they did their best to help.

At the end of the day, I found that my lesson plans were wildly out of spec for 6 student with autism, so I brought in the NPC Players to help me out. The NPC Players are my children, Nathan, Catherine and Paul. I asked them to read the script which were based of social studies lesson plans I presented in my classroom. Since my children couldn't come into my classroom due to various privacy and safety concerns, I had to work backwards and sideways to create script based of adapted lesson plans for 10 year olds. Every evening for weeks, the NPC Players and I tried to make the script come to life in stop motion form.

I got an A on this assignment, but I honestly don't believe my professor had a good handle on how much I achieved. One teacher, one teaching assistant, 2 classroom aides (sometimes different people), 6 10 year old students, who happen have autism remotely working with 3 typical middle and high school students, all working together to produce an understandably scripted video and associated adapted lesson plans to meet my professor's college class standards. It was quite an achievement.

At the end of the day, it was a bridge to far. The audio we worked so hard to produce bombed big time. But I would totally do it again. I think my students and children gave a great grasp of the historical event.


One last task has remained undone since the end of the project. The clean up. 9 kids and 4+ adults made a hash of my models. A mess that remains to this day.

Over the Christmas break, I plan on reorganizing my models and post images of them here.

Here are some examples images of random figures from the jumbled hash.