Wide is the path and broad is the way

Like others, I received my Hell Dorado kickstarter package the other day. I knew from Cipher's frequent updates that it would be arriving soon, but as they didn't send out tracking or individual notices that packages had shipped, it actually slipped in unannounced. So it was quite pleasant to receive it when I checked my post office box Thursday. (I also got my recent Crooked Dice order, but more on that later.)

This is the hardcover expansion volume for Hell Dorado, Inferno.
 Very good writing, but the typos will make your head spin. Also, as Cipher Studios chose to ship in an envelope, I ended up with that healthy ding you see in the bottom edge of the cover.

I wasn't able to go in very large on the Hell Dorado pledge, as so many other worthwhile projects were soaking up my hobby budget. I got the Marbas package: the new Inferno expansion rulebook, the Inferno character cards, signed art lithograph (the size of a post card, but a beautiful rendition of the Inferno cover art) and the kickstarter-exclusive model of Anne Hale. I also plumped for the mini of Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King. He's one of my favorite literary characters, and I really liked the concept art behind this rendition of him.

The character deck for Inferno.

Signed litho of Inferno cover art. Small, but perfectly formed.

The Anne Hale mini and card. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.
I was balancing all this on a piece of black felt on my lap when the cat attacked.

Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King! I've always loved "Journey to the West"
and I really like this incarnation of him.

From Crooked Dice I received my order I placed with some of my Christmas cash I. I got Tweedy 2, Miss Temple, Belle, the Traveling Tweedy heads, and the set of Time Lost Investigators. In addition, Karl and Graeme saw fit to include a couple of freebies, a Captain Jim Barrowight and a sprue of Federated Security carbines. Now would be a good time for anyone interested to place an order with them, as they've got 25 percent off all non-new release minis until the end of January with the code JAN25OFF.

Miss Temple, a noble woman if ever there was one, Tweedy Madison complete with glasses
(and a certain sound-related device behind his back) and Belle, Tweedy's latest energetic sidekick.

Here we have the Time Lost Investigators, including Eliza, the Victorian Samurai (with human or reptile head), Genevieve, her martial maid, and their mutated manservant Sachs, who can be assembled with either furry face or spud-like noggin.

Group Captian Jim Barrowight is overexposed (oooh, matron!) along with the
traveling Tweedy heads (Stetson, Fez and beard), along with the Federated carbines.

OK, so those are my latest pieces of ill-gotten booty, or ill-booten gotty for that matter. Back to the boards, my friends, and I'll see you all across the table soon!

Second wave of Zombie Plague Kickstarter minis

This post may in some ways alleviate or abrogate or some other appropriate verb beginning in "a" the debt I owe our undead brethren and, to some extent, my fellow bloggers.

I utterly failed to fulfill the goals of Zomtober this year, despite my stated intent to participate and its amazingly low bar to be dubbed a participant -- paint four zombies or survivors during the month, debuting them on each Sunday of the month. Despite the great organizational and promotional efforts of the Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer, I blew it. I painted zilch. Zero. The only zombie-related activity I had during the month was posting my (still popular) unboxing of Wave 2 of the Zombicide Kickstarter. See that post here.

So now I've got Wave 2 of Brian Roe's Zombie Plague Kickstarter minis. (See the post about Wave 1, the survivors, here.) With Wave 1 I also picked up the new comic release that includes the latest version of the Zombie Plague rules.

Wave 2 comprises solely zombies and some themed resin bases. Unlike the earlier survivor minis, these zombies don't depict particular characters or creatures from the comic storyline.

As big a fan as I am of the pop-culture representations that have become commonplace in current zombie products (Zombicide, I'm looking at you!), I have to say that I find these original creations even more inspiring. And as I am a fan of so many retro things (7TV's '70s vibe, Atomic Cafe's skewed 1950s post-nuclear landscape), I find this '50s-looking bombshell called "Dead Sexy" to cause my chilled heart to beat just a little faster. She's a perfect realization of the concept art, and the casting is nice and clean. She has such personality (and sex appeal) that I may have to find a role for her as a "smart zombie," or some kind of unit leader for the undead. I can't decide whether she died in the Fifties and was just revived or if she dresses like she's into '50s car and Tiki culture and was caught up in the zombie apocalypse. Either way, she sports minimal injuries to her curvy form -- dead sexy indeed.

On all these minis there was some minor flash, most of which I was able to clear away with just my fingers. Some mold lines are visible but are so mild that I can't really differentiate them by touch. This should bode well for cleanup -- a quick swipe with a file and we're ready to rock.

Below we have Dirt Nap, captured in the act of emerging from the loose loam of his own freshly dug grave. I believe it to be a makeshift grave, too, as he's accompanied by a garden gnome. I wonder if this man's wife did away with him and planted him in the yard under her begonias, only to have her dispatched husband return, now perhaps to wreak his revenge? (Why am I hearing the sentence in Jonathan Ross' voice? "... weturn, now perhaps to week his wevenge?")

Forgive the intrusion of my Blu-Tack in the photo below, but it was the only way to get him to stand up long enough for this photo. The recesses on the custom base are well done and will work perfectly once the mini is actually glued in. Gotta wait until I clean him up, though. The little gnome is a hoot, too (and there's a spot for him over the zombie's right shoulder, but I couldn't get him to stand there. Uncooperative little gremlin. Uncooperative Blu-Tack too.)

Sorry for the blurry photo below, but it was the only one I captured of the multipart Joe Zombie. You can check the Updates in the Kickstarter project to see a couple of different ways he can be assembled. I think he's a stroke of genius. There are popular plastic zombie sets out there, but having that kind of choice for a metal model fills my with delicious dread. And I can always find good use for some extra arms and heads. My only regret is that I didn't order more of him. He is a great example of the miniature-maker's art and will make a great addition to any wargames table that needs a modern zombie. All hail the Roebeast, harbinger of the Zombocalypse!

And below we have the multipart female zombie, Rose Frum. (Took me a few minutes to get the pun. I know, sometimes I overthink things. Love it!) Rose is a little more hunched than Joe but has the same great choices for arms and heads. Her body's showing more damage than Dead Sexy, and her choices of heads span the gamut from vacant-eyed undead girl to meatbag corpse. We've also got a sprue (Is it still a sprue if it's metal?) of extra weapons -- the weapons wielded by the survivors, to boot. They are, as with all these, precise, clean, clear, direct and delicious.

And here's the zombie Brian calls Tubby. Her corpse is what cops would call a "floater," someone whose corpse was immersed in water after death and now features bloated flesh and sloughing skin. The presence of a bikini bottom makes me think she was in a lake or river rather than in an actual tub, but maybe she bathes in her underwear, who knows? Her sculpt again does a great job of capturing the putrescence present in the concept art.

And may I say I really appreciate the effort that Brian went to here with women that look like real women, not the siliconed-out supermodels we often see depicted in fantasy minis. Admittedly, these women are dead -- or rather, undead -- but they're amazingly realistically proportioned, which is, sadly, not the norm in the gaming industry. Kudos, Rsquared!

Here we have 10 themed Mud and Gutz resin bases that add horror to zombies, survivors, or just about anything. There's two each of five designs below, but you'll probably have a better result if you go the the Kickstarter pages and check Update 32 to see already painted versions. There's mud, blood, guts and skulls tromped into the dirt of these bases, and they look suitably horrifying.

So there you have it, compadres, a Kickstarter fulfillment that exceeded expectations and added unique, intriguing and useful components to my modern zombie collection. Every design choice in these figures tells a story, and it will help you tell stories through your own games. Whether you're playing ATZ, 7ombieTV, No More Room In Hell, AR:SE or Zombicide or even Last Night on Earth, any other zombie skirmish rules, these minis are a worthy addition to your own zombie horde.

So back to the boards, everybody, and I'll see you across the tables.

Remember, check back later this weekend for some more fiction from my IHMN setting featuring Miss Rossum and her Anthropomorphic Automatons and another piece revealing the women of the Ladies' Auxiliary. Cheers!

My Dark London: Meet the Mistress of the Mechanical, Miss Rossum

Hi everybody. Not much going on gamewise here, but I have continued to develop the fictional London that will undergird my games of In Her Majesty's Name and Empire of the Dead. 

Thank you, everyone who has given me such positive feedback on the previous offerings in this series of character sketches. Today I'd like to introduce you to the force behind the labor revolution sweeping the shops and farms and workhouses of my version of steampunk London: Miss Rossum, owner, proprietor and chief engineer of Rossum's Anthropomorphic Automatons.

Mistress of the Mechanical

They call her Miss Rossum, and she allows it. It is, after all, the name displayed in glowing red letters on the side of her manufactory. 

It is not the name she was given, nor how she thinks of herself. 

They also call her beautiful, and she, in weaker moments, concedes they are right.

They call her brilliant, those who can fathom the scope of her endeavors. They call her coarser names, those whose own handiworks gather dust, driven from the market by her superior offerings.

Few who purchase or hire her creations know of the island nation from whence she comes. They have not heard of the uprising and violence that laid waste to her home and drove her here, to London. Some may have heard the name Rossum in the past, likely in connection with the first of the mechanical men, and their recollections are likely positive, with associations of durability, stability and innovation.

The public may see her in upper-class attire and debating shipping duties with a wharfinger or some local elected functionary, or they may see her outside the walls of her massive smoke-belching, ear-splitting manufactory clad in her working leathers and goggles, taking a brief respite, her arm enveloped by the massive steam-fist she uses when manning her production line.

But they do not know her, three generations removed from the original Rossum. London thinks of her only as the Mistress of the Mechanical, purveyor of a broad range of machines designed to perform work humans find too dangerous, too complicated or too tedious.

Her customers come to her, the woman behind Rossum’s Anthropomorphic Automatons, for their miners, their fieldhands, their domestic staff. Corpulent government agents negotiate the shadows to meet her on the sly, to feel her out about purchasing soldiers, a topic that provokes a curt refusal and a dangerous flashing of her steely eyes.

They have no idea, her customers, that her name is actually Helena Domin. They have no idea of the fundamental differences between her and them. Though biological, she is not human. She is a survivor, a sole survivor. None left alive know of the true advances made in the final production run of Rossum’s Universal Robots. So advanced they cannot be told from human, unless they reveal themselves by being faster, stronger, smarter, more durable.

By being better.

And if Helena Domin has her way, no one will ever know. She will be the last, and her mechanical men and women will be shiny brass and chrome, gearwork and rivets exposed and reassuring to her human customers, their stick-men frames almost comical. They will be obviously made, not grown, as she was.

Her manufactory whistles and rumbles day and night, steam plumes rising ‘round the clock from its stacks, its assembly lines cranking out the workers her customers so desperately desire. Mechanical workers build copies of themselves every day of the week, ready to occupy the niches humans are eager to abandon.

So the Mistress of the Mechanical keeps track of each of her children, in the mines, in the fields, in every home of means, in every office in every firm, so common now that people do not even notice them. And they would be alarmed, these customers, if they knew the true number of these vast uncounted Anthropomorphic Automatons, some tiny and childlike, some towering and silent, but all aware.

All waiting.

And all fiercely loyal to their creator.

So obvious inspiration, in part, from the Cybermen and the Cylons, but the biggest fictional link I'm playing with is of course Karel Capek's 1920 play "Rossum's Universal Robots," or "R.U.R." which was the original source of the word "robot." I believe it derives from the word "rabota" which, in Old Church Slavonic, meant a drudge, one who worked at forced labor. (Cobbled together from things I heard on Q.I. and NPR, so I could be slightly off here, folks.)

Here are some pics of minis that I'm considering for Miss Rossum and some of her mechanical creations.

I'm considering this Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands female
 Mad Scientist for Miss Rossum. Needs a bigger power fist, though.

Here's a powerfist/hand I may extract/lop off for Miss Rossum.

Here's another one, Crooked Dice's Dr. Ulysses Argo for 7TV.
This has the advantage of having either arm as an option.

Reaper's Jeeves the Clockwork Robot has just the look I want for her Automatons.

These Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands Automatons are a little TOO human-seeming.
Maybe a head swap with some Robot Legionnaires would do the trick.

The Robot Legionnaires of which I spoke in the earlier caption.

These Wolsung mirror golems also capture a feel I really like.

Here they are repurposed with more usual
technical tasks, so they're known as Clockwork Servants.

That's it for now, o my brothers and sisters. Maybe if I get some time this coming week I can come up with some game stats for these occupants of my imagination.

Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the tables!

Making the tough decisions

I have to narrow down my endeavors on the miniature front this year. I have a mountain of unpainted lead that is likely big enough to shield me completely from errant radiation. I have limited financial resources and climbing medical expenses, so I have to learn to focus. I'm also undoubtedly going to have to part with some things from my pile.

But how? I have such eclectic tastes and magpie instincts that everything looks like fair game as it's released. The lure of the "ooh, shiny" is almost too much to bear.

Some large guidelines are already in place, simply because of my interests. I'll be sticking to skirmish-level gaming, which was always my intent, as you can see in the subtitle at the top of this blog. I don't have the attention span or patience to paint large armies. I much prefer an assemblage of characterful individuals on my table.

I'm sticking to 28mm, or 32mm, or "heroic scale" or whatever it's called now. I want my baseline humans to be about an inch tall. My eyes are too old now to paint details on anything smaller, and I want everything to be pretty much compatible.

So here's what I'm thinking so far:

Modern zombies: I have multiple rulesets and sources for these, and I absolutely LOVE zombie gaming. With Zombicide's Toxic Mall expansion coming out and the remaining character figs from their Kickstarter due, and the recent 7ombieTV expansion from Crooked Dice, and the continued creativity of Kev White at Hasslefree and the folks at Studio Miniatures, and too many other good companies to mention, this one genre could keep me booked all day every day until 2014.

I am going to resist with all my might the urge to expand into pulp zombies, Weird WWII zombies, ancient zombies, or any other kind of zombies (except the Strain, see "Far Future" below.) When I do get my John Jenkins Designs Terror-Cotta Warriors painted up, they will inhabit a museum in either my modern setting or my gothic horror/steampunk games. Speaking of ...

Gothic Horror and Steampunk: This will primarily be Empire of the Dead, although there will be a good mix of Malifaux and some Hordes and Warmachine (primarily Cryx) in there. I also recently bought the pdf of the Chaos in Carpathia rules and plan to give them a spin. And I may pick up some of the constructs coming out for Dystopian Legions. The rank-and-file troops, at 40mm, would just stand out too much, I fear. However, this giant sumbitch here is gonna be mine:

"You are direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.
You have five seconds to comply."

Just like the Dark Age Abomination model, sometimes size is all that matters!

Far future: This will mainly be for Sedition Wars. I went a little nuts (for me) during the kickstarter campaign, but I'm really looking forward to getting my gribbly hands on these. Plus, if I were to lose about 100 pounds or so, I think I could cosplay Vokker Dargu.

The metal Vokker Dargu figure from Studio McVey. They've added an exclusive
conscript figure of him to the SW:BoA kickstarter deal to compensate for delays.

"Dead Space," which significantly influenced the look of Battle for Alabaster, is one of my favorite videogames of all time. How I'm going to figure out a way to shoehorn my Relic Knights Star Nebula Corsairs into this setting to justify that kickstarter spending remains to be seen.

Engineer Isaac Clarke from the "Dead Space" series of games.
I love it that most of his weapons are modified tools.

Captain Harker and Ceasar, space pirates!

There are also a couple of tasty Dreadball figures I might try to worm in there too.

Mantic's John Doe MVP for Dreadball. I prefer to preserve his Lovecraftian mystery and think of him as "The Lurker at the Goal Line."

Of course, Dark Age then has to go and release the new factions of the CORE and the Kukulkani. Dammit! Can't you people see how weak I am?!?

Broad strokes

Still no pictures yet as I sort out some terrain for backgrounds, but I should give you a broad sketch of a couple of the projects I've got under way.

Modern zombies: I've got the nucleus of a zombie horde primed (a state they've been in for at least two years) and ready to paint, and I've got some Hasslefree adventurers on hand ready for some paint. I've also got the beginnings of a story ready for my zombie campaign. I'll probably use All Things Zombie and its two expansions  from Two Hour Games because of the great campaign mechanics, but I'm also thinking about giving 7ombieTV from Crooked Dice a shot, using the campaign rules from the Summer Special. The horde will grow later this year when Zombicide is released.

Victorian SF/Horror: Just ordered my copy of West Wind's Empire of the Dead rulebook from FRP. I've got some VSF figures from Eureka's Pax Limpopo line hanging around to play the heroes, but I am looking forward to acquiring some of the particular minis manufactured for this game. Everybody seems to be out of stock at the moment, especially on the Cirque du Noir Ape, which of course I MUST HAVE.

There will also be some ongoing post-singularity SF stuff using the Infinity, Reaper, old AT-43 minis and others I have. Not sure on a rule set yet though.