The Boros (Arcane Legionnaire)

The Boros Arcane Legionnaire

A player sat across from me. He looked at me steely eyed, and in a voice that rivaled Clint Eastwoood's dry rasp he said: "A Boros Arcane Legionnaire..." His sentence began, and finished with  "...and I wanna be a goblin with a staff and spells. And fight too."

Alright I thought I can do this. You see, my dear readers, if you are not aware in Ravnica the writers made goblins a playable race.

Even though it went against the very fiber of my being I said "Sure! A goblin is fine." Ugh. Where I was raised a goblin was target practice." That was, for many years, the fantasy troupe that everyone could hang onto regardless of the module or campaign.

 That changed for me and many others with a short story about Drizzet Do'Urden meeting a goblin and a cute lil dude named Squee found aboard the MtG: Weatherlight.

And then there was the mini my player had selected, the Goblin Wizard by UK based Atlantis Games. Simply a beautiful sculpt, and was only 2 pieces (Staff w/ arm and the reast of the model) and a base. 

So... We now have our first goblin.Welcome to Ravnica!

Buying New Paint

Buying New Paint

Well a new stumbling block.

I have not updated my paints in quite some time. Most of them are 7+ years old. I keep spraying my desk with paint as I squeeze the hell out of the old paint bottles. The paint within crusted over like a dried out desert well. This ends up being messy, wasteful, expensive, and an enormous time waster.

So I decided to throw out "most" of my old paint. WE will see. I am very attached to my craft paints.

I also made the decision to choose one company to go with and order over 100 colors from. I plan on using these most of the time. What do you want? Its baby steps here!

So my choices were:

Top Tier Choices (and a reason)

• Vallejo- Love the colors but not everyone carries them.
• Army Painter- Love the set. But Reaper has a nice set of various skin tones which I don't see on the Army Painter site.
• Reaper- Yeah, I picked these guys. Stable company. Huge selection of paints and minis. With Craft paints I keep on getting paint that rubs off of white bones even after I scrub them with a toothbrush and soapy water. That is a pain. So I am going to try Reaper's "Core Set" of paint. I see that they make a set just for bones but I need paints that are going to work well with metal and resin too.

Second Tier Choice

• Privateer Press- I love their paint pots, truthfully the reason these guys are so far down on my list is because I actually own so few of their paints. From what I have see I like them. I like there paint pots.

Last Tier Choices

• Games Workshop- I feel like the paint pods are designed to dry out paint. If I ever buy any of their paints in the future I am going to put them in dropper bottles I got off of Amazon. But man, what a pain. I would rather spend my time painting rather that transferring paints from one container type to another. It would have to be a really good color. And they are, I just can't bring myself to waste an entire afternoon transferring paint when I could be well, painting.
• Craft Paints- I love me some craft paints. I have been working with several of the colors in this category for over a decade. But I keep watching these videos of pro painters saying that these paints can make the models look better.  So I figured I would will give it a whirl... Top Tier, here we come! (Mostly).

Rakdos Troupe 02: Under the hood of the Big Tent

Alright. So know I have a plan.

And I wait for the minis to arrive....okay, Tada! (This took about a week to get the minis.)

So here are the cultists..minus the minions and the Necromancer.


Here is a shot if the entire troupe. Notice that there is both a Hyena and a Krenshar mini for the Necromancer's familiar. Which ultimately leaves me with 5 minis to clean, assemble, prime (for 2 of them), and then paint.

Rakdos Troupe 01: All the World is a Circus

I wanted to create a small wandering troupe of Rakdos entertainers that travel throughout Ravnica that my party will encounter. So I present to you:

Harryhost's Band of Thieves and Vagabonds

I wanted to focus on really fleshing out the look and feel of a traveling troop of the Cult of Rakdos would be like. So I focused on the following items:

• Troop Members
• Character NOTES
• Terrain
• Acts
• Audience

Listed below are my thoughts on each of these points:

Troop Members:

I wanted a separation from the card carrying cultists and their minions.

Character NOTES:

I felt there there should be a few general traits that each character should have that could tie them back to the world writ large.

Terrain:

There is only one company that I have found (thus far) that sells 28mm Circus Terrain. I will be picking some up soon.

That company is Plastcraft Games. You can find the Circus pieces here:
https://plastcraftgames.com/en/buscar?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=Circus&submit_search=

Acts:

I have seen Circe De Soli a few times and I noticed how although there was a story there were specific acts throughout hte show. Some of those characters appeared once in a while and others were recurring, i.e. the "Stars" of the show.

I am looking at the acts from the following perspective:
1- The Ringmaster (Hallowhost) is the Narrator.
2- The Necromancer is the star of the Circus.
3- The Fire Eater Is the second in Command, and controls the giants
4- There should be some audience participation.
5-I want Distinct Acts to happen throughout the show.

Audience:

Few rules about the Audience:
1- No Kids. Seriously. Its unfair. Nuff said.
2- No Uber powerful members of the audience. There are specific exceptions to this but they should be planned.
3- Everyone loves a good show.

In a nut shell that is it. Now it is just a matter of gathering the miniatures to make this happen and getting them painted, Then Getting the terrain assembled.

Gruul Herd, of Owlbears?!

Gruul Herd, of Owlbears?!

I replaced most of my paints. That is what started this. I thought I would try out a lot of pro-paint colors but I wanted to go with a single brand. I chose Reaper. Unbeknownst to me this would send out a cascading flood of bonus miniatures.

Let's back up for a moment though. I chose reaper for one really simple reason. When I had made a previous order they had sent me an "Invisible Stalker" Miniature, which was an empty package labeled, yup, you guessed it, "Invisible Stalker". I still have it. It made me laugh.

I have tried several other companies' paints, But this was it. This was finally going to be my jump away from craft paints up to the next tier of paints. Mostly.

The other selections of paint that I may one day try are;  Vallejo, Army Painter, and P3 from Privateer Press. And even now I have a smattering of those in my repertoire. But craft paints are my great vice. I have used them for so long that I have become very accustomed to their unique profile. But I am weaning off of them.

I won't go back to GW as I hate their paint pots. The containers actually make it harder to paint. I have made the command decision that I don't need that kind of negativity in my life regardless of how much I like their models or the colors that they sell look like the beautiful essence they have wrung directly from a wild rainbow.

So, back to Reaper. Reaper was running a promotion for the new Black Bones".  So for every X dollars they would send you a new Black Bones Owlbear. Cool! And of course I had no idea.  None.

When I found a new gift in my order because along with the paints and I picked up a few more minis (of course I did, right?!).

So imagine my surprise when I saw a dozen owlbears. At first I thought Reaper was pranking me (See Above for Invisible Stalker package).

The immediate question, okay the immediate question after doing a quick google search to find out "why" I had all these owlbears was, "What am I going to do with a dozen owlbears?"

Now for those of you who have been keeping score what I am running, as far as games are concerned, right now I am:

1) NaK: Prepping to DM a sci-fi game using Cypher System rules we have nicknamed "NaK"

2) Ravnica:  Prepping 5E D&D Campaign set in Ravnica, Wizards MtG setting for D&D.  Which, incidentally, we nicknamed "Ravnica". We rock original thought around here.

So I figured I could do a cool "odd" paint job for one of them and have it appear in my sci-fi game. Then I would use all of them as a "herd" that the Gruul equivalent would herd from one part of the rubblebelt.(A rubblebelt is a section of the city that has fallen, and nature has begun to reclaim it.) to another part of the rubblebelt. Like really buff cowboys.

I thought that this might be a fine sight more interesting than bandits, as far as roadside encounters are concerned.

As I took on this project, I wanted to make the most of this and tried a few different techniques, which I do not normally use just to see what happened. Some are better than others, but that is how experimentation goes, amiright?

Long story short, below are the fruits of my labor including a few group shots next to a mirror so that you can see the owlbears' backs and the back of their wings.

The paint schemes were inspired by real birds, animated birds, my imagination, and the Minka, which is a really cool fictional bird whose color scheme I took cues from to make the Minka owlbear. I ran across the image while doing my research. Man, I love that image!

So without further ado... Below are the individual pics of the various species represented in the herd:

#1 Species: Blue Ray

#2 Species: Tundra Owlbear

#3 Species: Red Tailed Owlbear

#4 Species: Pandemonium Owlbear

#5 Species: High Septon Owlbear

#6 Species: Purple People Eater Owlbear

#7 Species: Sooty Owlbear

#8 Species: Hancock Owlbear

#9 Species: Druid's Friend Owlbear

#10 Species: Minka Owlbear

#11 Species: Oriole Owlbear

#12 Species: Great Gray Owlbear

Background Theme for Shdw Wars

Ravnica "City" Background

I am making a background for photos I take to upload to the internet.

I plan on using paint.dot net and printing the background image on a piece of cardstock paper.

This background is meant to be the default background for my Ravnica Campaign. At the same time, I don't want the image to scream "fantasy" much more than "science fiction" so that I can reuse the images. I would like it to be distinct though. I.E unlike I a lot of the sales photos that are out there. What I have close by is my IPhone, so that is what I will be using for this blog and too keep my costs from going to high.

Perhaps if things go well we can talk about enlisting someone who knows their ways around the photography space better than I.

I have settled on BG that goes from a light gray to a blue then to dark shadow of mottled loose crystals. I think it is going to be great. I plan on that background becoming my signature of sorts.

Reboot: Ravnica in Miniatures

Reboot

Rekindling the blog once again. There is magic in the air (and I am not just talking about Christmas!).

I have been on the hunt for miniatures that will for the themes of the; guilds, guildless, creatures and terrain for Ravnica the MtG setting and now a new D&D campaign setting.

After buying some of the pre-painted minis that Wizkids makes and some cards, I have begun to purchase other minis and plan on painting them. I will (eventually) be posting some pics here.

I am also going to discuss how I plan on filling out different guilds with minis that are not on the limited list that is currently available for this setting.

This should be a neat new adventure, Especially the Rakdos and Simic.

Adventure well, and may your mug also be full of your preferred beverage.

    -Shdw