That's me!

 

Het Lookit!

The full rules for Clash of Rhyfles is finally out...

and there on Page 4, is my name...

That's Me!
(I wonder who those other people are..)

It's kinda fun to see your name in print.   I've had my name in print before in Psychology Articles... as one of the authors mind you. not one of the subjects.  But this is for something that Actually Matters and is fun.

This is my first experience with being a playtester, so I don't have anything to compare it to.  I think I wormed my way into Official-ness just by being a persistent but polite pest to the rules author.  A combination of being available and eager when the rules were being developed anyway.  I didn't find it onerous in any way.  How hard is it to spout off opinions about game mechanics while having zero responsibility about the final product?  Turns out, not hard at all.  

I'll flatter myself and say that I had some good ideas, mixed in with all my stinkers.  Thanks Zombiesmith for the good experience.  

Now that the main rulebook is done, what's next?  I was invited to be contributor to other projects that Zombiesmith has in the works.  Though, I don't know if it's more like "Dream Team Assemble!" or "Cheap Help is Hard it Find and We'll Take What We Can get!"   

Thanks for Reading.

Double Thanks for Writing a Comment.

Till Next time.

Quar Crusader Command and Specialists

 

Hey there! It's been a long time to wait for more Quar. 

Of course it's a Quar themed post.  All the posts this year have been Quar themed so why stop now.  Hold up, let me check that.  Pause for internal analysis.....bzzz...Correction!  There was 1 post about Brigade Fire and Fury back in June and 1 post about Hobby Expenses back in Feb.  All the other 15 posts have been Quar related.  

Strap yourself in for number 16.  It's gonna be great.  Promise.

Quar Crusader Command and Specialists

I've done a LOT of work on Quar terrain of late.  So naturally it's time to focus back on expanding the Quar armies and paint some miniatures.  Yuck, what an awful chore.  Wish I was rich enough to pay someone to do it for me.    I dug into my mini Quar mountain of plastic boxes and found..

The Command box lets you build 10 miniatures of command types: officers, musicians, standard bearers, and etc.  Since I already had officers, this box has limited utility for me.  I got it because it had this miniature of a Quar doing the pose from Say Anything.

you know, this one...

You remember the movie Say Anything right?
Or are you dead on the inside?

And don't tell me that you never bought a box of miniatures just because it had ONE you wanted.  

other command types: 

Standard Bearer and Squirrel Handler.  

Quar use squirrels instead of carrier pigeons.  Apparently, there are no birds at all in the Quar world. I don't know why, maybe the creator was bit by a paraquet as a child. So, the Quar use these animals called Pyk-Pyk squirrels that are smarter than your average squirrel.  Whenever I think of smart squirrels I think of this movie: 

Merlin as a greyish squirrel.

And what does it say about me that everything reminds me of something else I saw on TV as kid?

So I painted my squirrels grey but the image above is kinda blueish and then I thought why not paint them an odd color?  Maybe I'll repaint them and then I thought that's a lot of work just for a game token...

Right face!  March off to storage.

I didn't get much more use out of that box.  The good news is that all the Quar plastic boxes are compatible with all the other plastic boxes so unused bits can be saved and used later on in some kit bash experiment.

Crusader Specialists (because they're special)

I got more milage out of the specialist box.  With all the new tanks Tractors coming out in plastic kits these days, the higher ups decided that my Crusader forces needed some anti-tank Tractor weapons.  

These dudes are armed with something like a piat called a torpedo.  To the Quar, torpedoes are newfangled technology.

Also out of the specialist box are these Crusader Pathfinders, which of course have special skirmish skills in the area of pathfinding....

differentiated from other Crusaders by having a bayonet
or by carrying a shotgun (SHOTGUN!)

And lastly, here are some additional Crusader Trench Raiders, for when only getting up close and very personal will do..

These guys re all spiked maces and single-handed short-range shotguns.

I do like this dude dual wielding.  
I wonder if there is a move reference I could make? 

FUN FACT: Dual wielding pistols is called Guns Akimbo. 

another FUN FACT: This was a long post just to document that I painted a whooping 16 miniatures (not counting the squirrels). 

Thanks for Reading.

Double Thanks for writing a comment.

Till Next Time.

Pacificon Quar Games

Nah, it wasn't bad.  Quite the opposite really.  It was FUN.

Pacificon Convention Report

Pacificon is in the Bay Area, which is where Zombiesmith is located.  Zombiesmith is the maker of Quar.  So I reached out and said "hey, I'm gonna be at Pacificon, soOOOoo if you were thinking of going to Pacificon as a vendor, then I have a GREAT idea...How bout I run a bunch of Quar games all weekend long on my nice terrain boards for you?"

"Go On..." said Zombiesmith, and I went "well, that's basically it....." 

And a deal was struck.  I would spend all weekend hosting Quar games and Zombiesmith would reward me for the effort by giving me an exorbitant amount of store credit.  At least I thought it was an exorbitant amount.  I am hesitant to state actual numbers as that seems gauche, and I am nothing but the epitome of sophistication.  Lets just say it's enough to keep me steeped in Quar for a while.  Especially at the glacier slow rate of painting that I am known for...but not enough to purchase one of everything in the store.  

So my con experience was:  All Quar, All the Time.   

Being the Busy Bee that I was, I neglected to take any pictures.  But other folks did.  Here they are collected for your enjoyment.  So enjoy them, I guess.

Extra credit.  Count how many times I'm pictured pointing at the table...

Kinda counts

definitely counts

doesn't count

hard to tell, but that counts
That's my hand pointing behind the tree...

These aren't my figures.
A guy named Nate spent a lot of time at the Zombiesmith Paint and Take,
painting up his troops.  I had to let him use them in a game.

not pointing...

Hopefully Zombiesmith got a few more sales.  I got to cosplay and pretend like I was one of the Gaming industry.  So maybe it was a win-win?  I didn't really ask for numbers.  Pacificon in general is kinda a small con with regards to miniature games.  It seems to do more Board and roleplaying.  

We talked briefly about doing it again for Dundracon, which is held in the same place but at a different time of the year, and reportedly has more miniatures gaming.  We'll see how it goes.  Maybe its the start of meing being some sort of game booster.  Maybe it's the end.  Maybe it's need more experimentation.  

I enjoyed hanging out with Mr HeadZombie and Mr AB (the head rules writter) and being mistaken as a member of Zombiesmith when I'm really just an euthiastic fan of the game.  And if I didn't correct everyone then so be it...

For my haul, I picked up yet another box of Quar that I don't have: 

So another Quar faction.  Ending my convention experience of  All Quar, All the Time with yet more Quar.  I'm nothing but consistent.  

End Note

When I got home the wife told me that a shelf in the hobby room had come off the wall.  It was full wqargaming rule books which survived the fall but it also had half of my very LARGE, Very COOL, very EXPENSIVE Viking Great Hall.  And of course, being the most expensive thing on the shelf and the hardest to replace (notwithstanding the company that made it is gone) it did not survive the fall so well....

trust me, there are snapped pieces everywhere..

I'm gonna have to think about what to do next...I mean, of course I'm gonna have to fix it...couldn't possibly just throw it into a tub and put it in the garage and forget about it right....right? 

Thanks for reading,
Double thanks for writing a comment.
Till next time. 

Quar house finished!

And just in time to.  I had a month to do it, and I did.  It's hard being this awesome at wargaming.  Too bad the awesomeness doesn't translate into other areas of life. 

(and in truth I'm not that awesome at wargaming either but don't tell anyone)

Quar House Finished

Taddaa!  With Quar figures included for scale this time.  

and there it is.  

And while I like it, I don't love it.  it's kinda like soup.  Even if it's a good soup, no one is ever excited about having soup for dinner.  

It's too big for one thing, but I think I could overlook that in the long run.  But there's something about the walls that I don't like.  I think I missed a step.  Maybe I should of added sand to the filler for more texture on the walls.  I definately messed up on the parts where the brinks are supposed to be showing through the stucco, as those parts just look dumb.  bricks are too big as well.

I like the way the roof and the ramp look though.  And as those are the main features that's good enough.

I don't mean to sound negative, it's not that bad.  Just a little disappointing because I wanted to love it.  But sometimes you get soup instead of pizza.  

I walked away to attend to something and when I came back I found my youngest son playing with it...

at least he liked it.

I told him to play carefully as daddy's toys were fragile.
He only broke one of the miniatures.

Maybe I'll like the house more when I see it on the terrain boards surrounded by other stuff.

I did learn some stuff by doing it and now am posed on the precipice for some real well made terrain next time.  

But there is Dave Stone terrain challenge done with extra credit to boot (as seen in last post, but I'll put a pic here to make life easy for Dave...

Lord knows Dave deserves some ease.  Best wishes Dave.

Pacificon

This weekend I'm off to Pacificon in the Bay Area to put on some Quar games.  It's kinda nice having the house project done so this week I can focus on printing out the QRSes for the games and play Minecraft.  

Thanks for Reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

till next time.

Halfway there;

 Whooooaaa It's halfway there      

whoooaaa-ooh, terrain on a prayer!

Glue gun in hand, it'll stick I swear,

whooaa-oh! terrain on a prayer! 

Quar House Progress 

Good progress of the Quar house / barn, my first time ever scratch building anything.  

Let's rapid fire pics to get through the assorted bits quickly in order to get to the big payoff.

First, create a little staircase out of foam:

tadaa!

then for the roof, cutout two triangles out of foam that will make the upper portion house.  Cover these with planks made out of coffee stirs to create a wooden effect.

Protip, when you cut the first triangle out of foam you can just slice that triangle in half,
so the you'll have two the exact same. 

For the actual roof, I used a jig also bought form shifting lands.

the idea being that it helps you cut consistent shingle shapes like so...

and after repeating the process several, several, SEVERAL times you have enough shingle strips to glue on appropriately size roof sheets..

little roof

Big roof

I decided that it'll be easier to paint if all put together.  But before that I had to cover the windows so that they wouldn't just look inside the ugly interior.  I took some plastic from a blister and some card tock and layered them inside.  The plastic down first and then the card stock, to create a glass effect and light coming from inside...

not the best picture.  Here is the inside

and the outside.  
still not the best picture and I'm not sure that makes the effect.
But it gets the job done.

Now it's time to glue all the separate pieces together...

All the separate pieces laid out.  

using a hot glue gun on the low setting, I glued it all together.  

 Somehow somewhere along the way I mis-measured,
as I didn't plan for the ramp to butt up right against the house.
I thought there would be some space in between.

it's pretty big.  I did not appreciate how big until I saw it all together. 

For a reference, here it is next to the Sarissa MDF barn..

Since 28mm buildings aren't in scale anyway, I don't think the larger house will be an issue other than the large footprint on the table.  Though the whole point of the terrain is that it's sits in the corner and looks pretty.  But there it is, in all of its scratch build glory.  

This gives me about 2 weeks to paint the thing.  Should be good as long as I don't waste any time.

Time Wasters:

The kids went back to school.  It's glorious.  but they brought back with them germs.  And of course, the sickness has transferred to me.  Got all the symptoms. 

The other big-time waster is our newfound video game addiction 

My son is big into Minecraft, and I thought that I would try it out just to see what it was and have an understanding of what it is, and now I'm all into it too.  It's a nice way to spend time together.  But there have been a few nights where after he goes to bed...and I still play it.  I have history with video games.  There was a time when I could play Word of Warcraft OR finish my dissertation for grad school....but not both.  

Not Time Waster

I went over to my friend's Mr. PC professional wargaming shed for a game of Dead Man's Hand.

Table set up

Game play picture.

I really liked the game of Dead Man's Hand.  It's got good play and easy mechanics.  Which is good because I have a whole pile of terrain for it around here.... somewhere. 

Extra Credit

I finished the extra credit assignment that I gave myself.  

Tadaa!

28mm 

Just a fancy cup holder really.  A place to put in game resource tokens.  

Thanks for reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till Next time.