Saturday, July 29, 2023

Heavy Metal: My Painted Coins for Board Games

Heavy Metal for your games

Image credit: Amazon ( https://amzn.asia/d/6TUCMOL )

A good deal?

For once, Amazon Prime Day in Japan showed an item I was actually interested in - a set of metal coins for RPGs and board gaming. Called 'Dragon Gold Coins' in Japanese (ドラゴン金貨), or 'DND coins on Amazon US'. These usually cost around 2,700 yen ~3,500 yen, depending on the set and amount (with imported versions going much higher). With the discount, they came in at 1,600 yen for fifty, including a fake leather bag so I thought, 'Why not?'

The price was right...
I preferred the dragon design here and the obverse to some of the others I had seen...
the large amount of coins included...
the coins have a rim of sorts on one side and this adds a touch of realism (some don't)

Reality vs. Expectation

Take a look at the image above. The coins in both the pile and the close up images look very gold. Unfortunately though the set I received was a much more 'coppery red'. Not quite to the level of actual copper, but a definite red tinge.

I forgot to take a photo, but if you look at some of the review photos on Amazon (US) you can see what I mean (the two coins in the center of the image, just above the copper.)

Image source: A customer review image from Amazon.com

Take a closer look using another user review image:

Image source: Amazon.com review by Warrior Nomad

Compare those to the gold fantasy coins in the promo image at the top of this post and you get a sense of the colour - and how different it is from 'gold'! Also (and this was to be expected) they looked very 'flat' because there is no wear or tear.

So I thought - maybe I can make these more 'Gold' and add a bit of a used look to them too.

The End Result

I won't keep you hanging on, here they are after I worked on them:

Image 1.

Image 2

Image 3

What do you think?

The Process

I used three Games Workshop/ Citadel paints:

Agrax Earthshade (a 'wash')
Nuln Oil (a 'wash')
Auric Armour Gold

Image 3 shows you three coins.

Top left: I think this was the most successful, so I did about half of them like this.

a.) Paint on Agrax Earthshade (leave to dry for a day and then do reverse).

b.) Drybrush with Auric Armour Gold.

c.) Spot paint specific areas with Nuln Oil.

e.g. The 'inner-ring' around the dragon, the areas in the wings etc.

The top right and bottom center coins are the result of a simple Agrax Earthshade wash only. I wasn't entirely sure which I preferred, so I've decided to have a mix of both to add visual variety.

I'm happy with the result. I wanted better definition with a more 'worn and used' look for relatively little time, and I think I achieved that (I guess the whole painting process took a couple of hours and I enjoyed myself.)

Over time, the gold and wash may come off a bit as the coins are handled and moved around in the bag, but that isn't a big deal to me.

I feel rich!

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Iron Helm

'Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn...'

...at the going down of the sun and in the morning,

we will remember them.

(From 'For the Fallen', by Laurence Binyon)

I've been playing a lot of Iron Helm in the morning before work.

A quick set up, tough dungeon-delving solo game, it is well worth a look if you like a simple-to-play system that involves some interesting resource management decisions. I really like the premise of being an older adventurer who is on the verge of retirement and just needs to pull off one more delve to get the gold to retire (In computer games I'll often design my character as older.)

Iron Helm is (to date) the only 'print-and-play' game I have (a quick Google search will point you to sites where you can buy a print-on-demand version, or pay and download the files.) It was quite an adventure in itself to make it but I'm glad that I did! There is a quite a sense of achievement in seeing a game you have 'made' yourself - even when the game kicks you between the legs and then stomps on your head when you hit the dirt. Despite that, every game feels like a memorable adventure with highs and lows and some thinking as you learn the cards and hone your techniques. It makes me sad when my adventurer meets their doom!

Moliclan rolls a perfect parry to fend off the terrifying wraith!

I won't talk about how to play here, except to say that for a simple game I come across a lot more rule-checking than I thought I would, mainly to do with timing and specific cards (I'm looking at you mimic...) The rulebook covers the basics, but you soon realize that there is stuff that should be covered but isn't. This is included in a supplementary book/ PDF, and many other questions are answered in online forums and a fan-made FAQ.

Fan-made tracking cards for your stats
'Comprehensive resource tracking cards' by Karsha

However, what Jason Glover has achieved here with just a deck of 16 dungeon cards to choose from is really impressive. Every time I turn over a card I feel tense, and the line art is very evocative and gorgeous.

Highly recommended.

I found the 'Cinderblade'! Now we're cooking!

Saturday, June 17, 2023

What I'm playing: More Hexploring over and under ground.

Necromancy makes death more fun...

The valley stretches out before you

While I haven't played as many solo games recently as I'd like, I brought two games back to my kitchen table for solo runs. The first is an overland adventure 'Hexplore It: Valley of the Dead King' and the second a made-for-solo classic print-and-play - 'Iron Helm'. The former is an overland adventure, and the latter a push-your-luck dungeon delve.

I've written before about my initial experience playing Hexplore It: Valley of the Dead King (VoTDK). I had another run at the game a week or two ago, this time with some enhancements and added components that I'd tracked down. I went in with a few goals:

Play a faster game and become 'smoother' with the core systems.
Try some different race and role combos.
Try to use the app more to track stats.
Play a 'full map' variant.

I'm happy to say that all the bits I initially thought were fun were more so this time around.

Character Generation

One of the most attractive things about the Hexplore It system is character creation. There are lots of roles to choose from, and then mash up - either randomly or intentionally - with one of many races. I wanted to try something randomly, but still have a good two-handed solo run, so I chose a 'Striker' (fighter) and 'Healer'. Who did I end up with?

Meet my Grey Dwarf Necromancer, and Half Elf Divine One. Just for fun, I spent 5 minutes creating some images in Hotpot. AI.

Maladus 'Aren't you a bit tall for a dwarf?' Ironside

Maladus Ironside (as imagined by Hotpot AI)

So his trick is doing damage, but also being able to raise fallen opponents as an undead 'Dark Legion' which he can command to join the battle for a round. Here is his dry erase board:

Hexplore It Necromancer dry-erase board (front)

Hexplore It Necromancer dry-erase board (reverse)

Brimbildor 'Pretty boy' Silverhair

Brimbildor Silverhair (as imagined by Hotpot AI)

The 'Divine One' can use 'Empowered Recovery' to heal health, and also resurrect a fallen comrade in (but not outside) combat.

The Divine One dry-erase board (front)

Divine One dry-erase board (reverse) and Race cards

A little help from the app

In addition to rolling up the party and updating the dry-erase boards for them I also made a serious effort to use the app this time around, and it did make life pretty easy. For a free app, it works great most of the time and makes tracking most stats hassle free - combine a role and race and stats populate automagically, tap to increase/ decrease skills and health etc.

As you can see from the images below, it looks quite 'busy', but hats off to the team for providing this. I can see that some people will really dislike the dry-erase system, and the app gives them a viable alternative. There are a few niggles, but overall great!

Click image to expand

Sadly, the team came to a quick (and sticky) end!

I ended up starting my adventure far away from some of the best quests, in the Rokk'to encampment. Even when using a luck stone to get some new options, I had a lot of travel to do early on. To compound matters, the Dead King randomly entered the game on round 1 - arghhh, and THEN kept (randomly) choosing the next closest city to target for conquest, so he didn't have far to travel to consume his next victims. For each city he conquers, his power and speed increase. This meant that the endgame arrived quickly and I was too underpowered to face him. I hadn't completed many quests or grown in my own powers enough!

On the way though, I...

...visited a dilapidated shrine near the mountains and received a Blessing of Good Fortune...

...travelled to some ancient ruins and had a fantastic adventure yet emerged unscathed (an awesome result by rolling a 1 on a D10 for some cool rewards)...

...defeated a bandit prince and was rewarded with the appearance of Bezzelquark's Black Market (another perfect role of a 1!)...

...explored some locations and solved some quests (not enough though!)

New components - Encounter Deck and Living Card deck

Despite falling to the Dead King I still had a good time. I got to use the 'Encounter cards' that are sold separately. These add (much requested) art to the different encounters you have, and they really make a difference to the look and feel of the game - very evocative!

Silk Spiders

Thugs

Mangy Wolves

'Opponents assemble!'

The 'Encounter Deck' also includes 'peril cards' which add dangerous but rewarding new challenges to choose from. I didn't get to a high enough level (or roll enough sixes) to choose them this time! (You can see them in the image below - the red exclamation cards in the image below at right).

I also used the 'Living Card Deck', which brings the online QR code-sourced quest lines into the game in card form. In this adventure, I didn't come across them.

Every hill and dale in view

Finally, inspired by Daniel over at 'The Dungeon Dive' (a YouTube channel I really enjoy), I played this game with almost all the map tiles out at the beginning. While that meant I didn't need to explore to find new tiles for quests, it was pretty thematic - Maladus and Brimbildor have lived in the valley all their lives - so they roughly know the lay of the land.

A small quality of life improvement for next time would be to use a die on each of the quest markers that get put on the board so I can easily tell which quest is which without hunting around.

Overall, I really enjoyed this overland adventure, and I'm looking forward to my next visit to the Valley. In the meantime, a much shorter underground experience is Iron Helm. I'll share more about that in my next post.

Cheers!

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Cthulu Death May Die - Hastur joins the party

The King in Yellow

I posted some WIP of the Cthulu Death May Die base set models in a previous post.

What you won't see in that post is 'Hastur', one of the two Elder Gods that comes in the base set. The photos you can see there (and below) of the Disciples of Hastur also actually don't show that those are the second attempt on those models, as I really hadn't liked my first attempt!

The problem?

I'd tried Citadel contrast paint 'Iyanden Yellow' over my first 'slapchop' undercoat and grey/white drybrush. To my eyes it hadn't worked at all! Yellow is notoriously difficult to work with, and the contrast yellow looked washed-out, dull, and chalky, especially over the smooth robes. If I added more it looked very orange.

I wanted a more vibrant effect, so I went back to a normal yellow - Flash Gitz Yellow and Iyanden Sunset, along with a Gryphonne Sepia wash. That process took multiple thin coats and a frustratingly long time, but I ended up with a result I much preferred.

And Hastur?

Having learned from my failure with the Disciples and trying a contrast paint yellow, I now knew that for part of the Hastur model (yellow robes) I'd stick with normal paints and layers. For the tentacles and other parts I would stay with Contrast paints to save time. Here it is!

Hastur & Disciples (front)

Hastur and Disciples (side)

I kept thing pretty simple, and just stayed with a contrast paint Ork Flesh green. I used a Wraithbone white for the teeth, followed by a wash and then highlights. To add some interest, I then added an 'Ardcoat gloss varnish on the mouthparts and Hastur's red fleshy 'bits'.

Good enough for the board game table I reckon!

Cheers.

Saturday, May 20, 2023

Cthulu Death May Die Painted Minis (WIP)

Getting nearer the table...

...but on the way!

I've been finding time to paint the models in the base box (before work in the morning and at the end of the day) and I feel like I'm nearly there in terms of being ready for a game. The key to that is getting the basic colours down and aiming for speed, rather than lots of detail (or beauty!). I still have 4 more monsters to paint (including Hastur) but this is about 90% of the base box.

These models have received:

Priming: (Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black)
Basecoats: A mix of Citadel contrast paints for highly textured surfaces, and standard paints for smooth surfaces, some details (with an occasional wash.)
Spot varnish: An occasional gloss varnish on eyes, slimy bits.

They aren't fully finished in many cases (base rims need to be done in black, and bases painted up etc.) but I feel like I'd be happy to use these.