piątek, 7 stycznia 2011

Warzone and Chronopia rules sale at Prince August


If any of you wanted to try Warzone or Chronopia (but didn't want to pay the cover price for the books), now it's possibly a good moment to consider it again. Prince August is having a 50% sale on all books and starter sets for both of these games - a great deal, I would say:

czwartek, 6 stycznia 2011

2011 projects

15mm Martian Banshee Sergeant WIP
One of the reasons I started this blog for is that I could keep track of my various modelling projects and be motivated to make progress at them.

Even though there are around a dozen of projects I would like to get involved in, there's only a handful I can do at the time - so here's a sneak peek on what's going to be featured on Multiverse 15 in the upcoming months.

1. 15mm WarZone
There are two small armies I'm going to do for WarZone/Mutant Chronicles gaming: one being a Capitol force, the other - a Bauhaus one. Here's what they will include:
Capitol:
Martian Banshees squad (The Scene Battle Robots with a GZG headswap for sergeant as seen on the left; these are large minis, inteded to be a good head taller than other 15s, but I like the looks of space soldiers in ridiculously huge power armor suits - yes, Marcus Phoenix, I'm talking about you - so that's OK)
Light Infantry (Rebel Mini Earth Force Marines)
Great Grey (GZG grav bike)
Going with dark green/brown scheme for those forces (Banshees being an obvious exception) - the minis I use for Light Infantry here are going to stand in for different types of space marine grunts in my future projects.
Bauhaus:
Ducal Militia (Eureka Sci-Fi Germans as seen in the previous post)
Etoiles Mortant (Rebel Mini Black Widow Mercs with katanas and some additional armor)
GT Offroad (QRF Light Patrol Vehicle)

2. 15mm Batman and X-Men characters with rules for gaming with these
Those Rebel Miniatures supers surely give me some nice ideas... expect to see the Batman, Joker, Two-face and others here in a month or so. This project is not yet started, but the rules we're going to use are taking their shape as we speak. The most characteristic feature of them is the way the characters are activated: each player can 'focus' on a single point on the battlefield, with every miniature within 3" from the counter placed there getting a chance to act. The idea is that the characters getting to act are those that camera focuses on - and I guess we will be using those rules also for other 'cinematic' settings. Will try to post a playtest version of the rules as soon as I'm finished writing it.

3. 15mm Lord of the Rings
WIP Faramir (Robin Hood from Splintered Light Miniatures)
 A project slowly but steady progressing is my LotR collection with three main forces being developed: Uruk Hai (Eureka Miniatures Man-Orcs), Rohirrim (Vikings, Saxons and Late Romans from different manufacturers) and some main characters. The latter are probably the most time-consuming part of the project, as they are mostly either conversions or minis sculpted entirely from scratch.

4. Sci-Fi Corridor system
I know there are some ready-made available from Litko and different PDF manufacturers - but as you have probably noticed by now I can be quite picky with what to play with :-) The idea is to make a large lot of different-sized detailed 3D tiles and walls for those 'corridor crawls' every gamer wants to get into at some point (think Alien, Space Hulk, deserted Vaults from Fallout etc.). Will probably get to making those in February - at the moment I'm just planning it out and making list of needed bits and pieces. But you can already expect a tutorial on making good-looking stairways for 15mm Sci-Fi scenery (next week probably) and some pretty unorthodox use of Lego bricks.

What's it all about?

About a year ago - pretty much around the time when it became clear that '15 really is a new 28'  - I decided to order some Ravagers from Ground Zero Games. It was to be just a distraction after the exam session: I wasn't much of a painter (even less a gamer) back then. I had read plenty of rulesets, but played not more than around a dozen of them: starting with WarZone 2ed., then Lord of The Rings, WFB, Warlord, Operation: Overlord, Warmaster, Necromunda, 5.56mm, Celtos and others. Painted around 200 miniatures, most of them 25-28mm.
15mm Bauhaus Ducal Militia (Eureka Sci-Fi Germans)

But with every single ruleset and setting I wanted to get into, the same problem arised: painting the miniatures took way too much time and playing with unpainted ones was just MEH. But starting with those GZG minis I could to spend around an hour daily on painting them and be able to field a good-looking squad for a skirmish game in 10 to 12 days. Then I stumbled upon Ganesha Games rulesets (Flying Lead and Song of Blades and Heroes), played a scenario or two with them... and well, I was hooked on wargaming back again.

15mm Troll Slayer (Demonworld/Hobby Products)
The basic idea behind the blog is to share my gaming and modelling projects with other of you 15mm folk out there. But what's it all about with 'Multiverse'?
I try to stick to one scale and one basing convention while recreating armies from different settings in 15mm. Therefore I can mix-and-match pieces of my existing collection for different rulesets. Why not use the same miniatures for Warhammer Bretonnians and for gaming HYW? Or pitch an undead warband against some of those WW2 soldiers? The same miniatures can work both as LotR Army of the Dead and undead wights, etc., etc.
15mm Aragorn, own sculpt
Last but not least: As you may notice, plenty of the stuff featured here will be based on some existing IPs: Mutant Chronicles, Warhammer Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Fallout series... There are basically two reasons for that. Firstly, I just like the looks of Bauhaus army in Mutant Chronicles, of LotR Rohirrim as portrayed in Jackson's movies, of Fallout supermutants and raiders. Secondly, plenty of people ask - on TMP and in other places - what minis to use while recreating armies already existing in 28mm or some other scale. I hope that they will find some of my ideas here inspiring while doing their own projects.