This review is a little off topic, but I’ll post anyway as it vaguely relates to war gaming, particularly if you’ve ever tried Brikwars!

I’ve been aware of Brickarms for a while now. They’re a US company that manufacture third party weapons for Lego Minifigs. I hadn’t ordered from them until recently as they don’t ship outside the US. However a Makeblog post rekinkled my interest and it seems they have an Australian reseller which I missed before.

I couldn’t resist picking up the World at War pack to add to my Lego Indiana Jones figures. At $20aud for a small pack of plastic pieces they’re not cheap, but after spending a couple of hours playing with them last night with my five year old son I figure it’s probably money well spent. Here’s a quick review of the Brickarms pack.

The pieces arrived in a small baggie and include the set of weapons you see above. I’ve photographed them next to several bonafide Lego pieces for scale. The Lego pieces are the standard shovel, the grey plastic revolver and the Star Wars blaster rifle to the far left. Overall the quality of the Brickarms pieces is excellent. They’re cast in the same hard ABS plastic that Lego is made from. This means they have the same weight and general feel to them as Lego pieces, down to the finish too. It also means they should have the same excellent long life as normal Lego pieces.

The sculpting on the weapons is superb and despite the fact some liberties have been taken to make them work with Minifigs, most of them should be instantly recognisable to any WWII buff. It was the M1 Garand and Panzerfaust in particular that compelled me to buy this pack. In fact many of the weapons are more finely detailed than their Lego equivalents which is obvious from the above photo when you compare the grey Lego revolver to the various German and American automatic pistols. A particular high point for me was the fact the Lewis gun has been sculpted with a clip at the bottom which will fit a standard Lego lever holder. That means you can easily mount the weapon on a Lego vehicle for AA protection.

In terms of casting they’re also very good, although unlike Lego pieces you may have to do a little clean up with an Xacto blade to remove rough scraps of plastic where the pieces have been detatched from their sprues. The weapons can be used without clean up, but the anally retentive modeller in me had to spend five minutes just tidying them up so they’re perfect. That’s really the only comment I have about the casting. Like Lego pieces they do have fine, almost unnoticable mold lines and pin ejection marks, but you can mix them with Lego pieces without any visible difference, which is a sign of quality casting.

Here’s another scale shot of Lego Indy and Henry Jones Snr ready for action. You can see the weapons look great on the figures and as I mentioned my young son has already had fun with them, conducting terrible warfare across our kitchen table as all manner of hell was unleashed. The more politically correct amoungst you (I doubt many of my visitors are but who knows) may mutter something about glorifying war etc, however as many Lego ranges already come with weapons (Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Star Wars, Lego Agents etc) I’m going to happily ignore you.

To close, Brickarms weapons are excellent and although a little pricey compared to normal Lego are well worth it, particularly if you’re already a Lego fan and want a little more variety in your Minifig armory.

Here’s the first seven Space Hulk Genestealers I’ve dip painted. That leaves me with 16 left, all of which are repeated figures except for the big nasty Brood Lord. The figures are nicely sculpted for a GW boxed board game. I particularly like the floor bursters, because they’re a little unusual and also easy to paint, as you only have to deal with half the figure.

One mildly annoying aspect to them though, both for gaming and painting, is that none of them are on a standard base. They have a mix of wierd and wonderful bases, the most problematic being the fellow standing on half a Terminator. He’s hard to paint because there’s really no where you can get a decent grip on that base with a tool so you can dip the figure and I’ve resorted to hand painting dip onto that particular figure. The odd basing is also a problem from a gaming point of view because some of those larger figures can be hard to stuff onto a board laden with Genestealers.

Look carefully at some of the figures and you’ll see some dip runs, particularly around the knees and feet of the Genestealers and some of the 45 degree slopes on the metallic bases. The perfectionist in me is mildly annoyed I’ve let that happen, but the pragmatist in me can live with it. The green dip gives the figures a nice ’slimy’ sort of feel, and the odd run sort of enhances that somewhat. Plus heck, I’m speed painting so you’re going to see the odd run here and there. Once the figures are in play on the table I doubt you’ll even notice them.

I showed Griff what I’d painted last night while he was GMing a game of Dark Heresy and he seemed generally appreciative which is encouraging (hi Griff). I think a Space Hulk board full of these green Genestealers will look pleasing to the eye.

If I make some effort I think I can probably do another 7-8 Genestealers this week and still have time to play a few Xbox games. I guess at some stage I should also start to think about how I’m going to paint the 11 Blood Angels Space Marine Terminators in the box. These figures are considerably more detailed than the Genestealers and while I still plan to dip paint them (with the same chestnut dip I used on my Warhammer Orcs) it’s going to take a bit longer to base coat each figure to the dipping stage.

Yes, it’s gone quiet here on the modelling front again. If you’re wondering why it’s because of several things.

First I’ve started a new hobby and blog: physical computing with an Arduino board, which has been stealing some time from modelling.

Secondly, it’s because I’ve got a bunch of projects on the go at the moment, but haven’t made enough progress really to warrant a blog post. I’m still painting Orcs and Zombies using dipping and since we’ve been playing a bit of Mordheim recently I’ve started planning a new, small terrain piece for that – which I intend to turn into a tutorial about building Mordheim ruins.

Finally, the recent arrival of the latest addition of Space Hulk has also been taking up some of my time. Alas I didn’t pick up a copy ($185 locally in New Zealand is a bit rich for me), however my mad friend Griff did and somehow I’ve managed to rope myself into assembling and painting all of the figures in the box for him…? Most likely I’ll be painting with some very quick dipping. Honestly I should have kept my mouth shut, but I think Dustan’s excellent conversions of his own Space Hulk figures must have inspired me or something? Anyway this project is sure to feature in the near future – once I figure out a decent colour scheme for dipping Genestealers!

Now I’ve painted my Orc Border Patrol force, I’m looking to expand it to a full Orc and Goblin army. I was steeling myself to pay full retail prices, until Daniel pointed out Imperial Games sell Games Workshop below retail in New Zealand. To my knowledge that makes them the only discount Games Workshop retailer in New Zealand. They carry the entire Games Workshop range, not to mention several other superb independent companies like Pig Iron, CNC Workshop and Ziterdes (excellent for terrain) and if you order more than $75nz worth of goods they’ll ship for free within the country. I had a few questions about my order so emailed them and was pleasantly surprised to find Imperial Games are also run by professional and responsive folks, which is exactly what you want from an online retailer.

I’ve ordered the following from them to bulk out my Orc’n'Gobbo force. I’ve put the GW NZ retail price in italics for comparsion:

$49.50 ($55) Night Goblins Regiment
$22.50 ($25) Night Goblin Fanatic Box
$49.50 ($55) Orc Warriors Regiment
$36.00 ($40) Orc Warboss
$67.50 ($75) Warhammer Giant
$225.00 ($250) Total

That’s a 10% discount on GW retail and free shipping. I’ll be using Imperial Games from now on for most of my hobby purchases, particuarly since they carry several other lines I’ve mentioned in the past and the Ziterdes range includes lots of useful terrain.

I also have no problem recommending them to any gamer based in New Zealand. It’s fantastic to finally have a professional, discount Games Workshop web-store based here in New Zealand.

Dustan recently posted in our forum about his homemade paint station and I’ve edited his posts into this blog entry. There are more photos and details of construction in the forum posts if you’re interested – Stu.

I decided to revamp my tired old painting table with a stepped shelf system designed for more comfortable painting and protection from my daughter Pagyn (almost 2 at the time of writing). I wasn’t alone on the mission as my boy Shaun lent a hand and was a wonderful help to keep things flush while I screwed them.

The materials were all scavenged from about the garage. I had a 1200×600mm sheet of 4.5mm MDF, the chipboard was about 200mm x 595mm at 20mm depth. The screws were the only part I needed to buy, about 85 screws all up at $0.10 a piece. The tools used were a jigsaw, skill saw, coping saw, a couple of clamps and a drill.

The table has been kicking arround with me for the longest time, it is an old TV table and I have been using it as a paint station for years. It’s a good size for hiding between furniture when not in use and the lower part of the table is where my current models, bitz and tools are stored.

I sketched up a diagram of roughly what I wanted it to look like, then after cutting the back and sides I drew the plans straight onto them. This first shot shows the table with the back and splash shields in place. I didn’t have any hole cutting drill bits so I used a coping saw to make the water jar hole. The cuts were made by clamping a guide rail onto the material to cut. The shelves are made from a system of screwed together steps with MDF tops and chipboard walls.

Here’s a shot of the fully stocked table so far. I am also over half way through building a breadbox style lid, made from old ventian blind slats, which will slide into the void above the top shelf.

So far construction has taken about six hours, and the design and measurements where largely made up on the fly. Painting at the table is nice as everything is available and arranged tidily, and the high sides limit Pagyn’s angles of attack which has made it much easier to get things done.

Very nice work Dustan. I admire both your scavenging and DIY abilities, and I particularly like the inclusion of a large storage area underneath the work surface. I’m also slightly jealous of your collection of GW paints. Most of mine have been used, or dried up and I’m left with the horrifying prospect of purchasing some more, at $7NZ locally for a single bottle! – Stu.

I changed jobs late last year and was pleasantly surprised to discover that a number of the find computer geeks I work with are also card and board game nerds too. In a given week we seem to get through three to four games of varying pedigree over the lunch hour. Naturally we play a common games like Carcassonne and occasionally Magic, but also a bunch of games I’ve not been exposed to before.

A group favourite from Adam’s collection is Race for the Galaxy, which as the title suggests is a race to build the highest scoring galactic civilisation. Also like a typical race, there’s no interaction between the competitors. It does however have an interesting mechanic where players decide which phases of a turn occur in any given turn, so a canny player can sort of parasitically benefit from the other player’s choices. This is a card game you can finish in under an hour, even with four to five players and each game is varied enough that we’ve gone weeks just playing Race.

Andrew has dragged out Clans once, which I found to be an enjoyable game of diminishing resources and escalating scoring with a single core mechanic that sort of feels like crystals forming in a solution. Possibly it’s a little too simple though as we haven’t replayed in the three months I’ve worked so far, although I’d happily try it again. It plays quickly too so you can get a couple of games in over an hour.

Zombie Fluxx is a card game that Adam bought in for comparison after I purchased a copy of Munchkin from Board-Games.co.nz. Having played Zombie Fluxx over a lunchtime this week I have to say I wish I’d purchased it instead of Munchkin! It has the same kind of ‘beer and pretzels’ feel of Munchkin, plays in a similar fast and furious fashion, and has the same large element of luck but the Fluxx mechanic of playing cards to change the game rules (including the victory conditions) is just a little deeper and more interesting than Munchkin. Plus you know, it’s got a Zombie theme, which actually works quite well with the rather abstract game.

In closing I’m also surprised to find how relaxing a midday board game is. I work in IT as a software enginner, which while not a physically draining job, certainly can be a mentally tiring one. Board and card games are an intellectual exercise too of course, but they’re also social affairs. Something about a game over lunch keeps my mind sharp enough to head back into the code in the afternoon, but is sufficiently different to refresh me as well. Possibly it’s the invigorating smack talk that goes on during the games. If you have the means I’d seriously recommend getting a gaming group together at your office.

I’m also interested to hear any recommendations for interesting board or card games that can be played with three to five people in around an hour. Any suggestions dear visitors?

It’s time for another annual round up, and I have to say looking back it’s been an un-productive year here at Tabletop Terrain. My personal life had a lot of ups and downs in ‘08 which made it hard to concentrate on anything, including hobby work. Frankly I’m glad the year is over and I’m looking forward to a more positive 2009.

January, February

The Hirst Arts Cathedral saw some good progress early in the year, but has stalled again as I’ve run out of Ultracal 30. In the new year I’m definitely going to visit TopMark in Auckland and grab a fresh pail.

March, April, May

February saw the start of a Flames of War three month painting challenge which I largely failed to complete. I painted a series of DAK Panzer turrets using an interesting weathering technique. To date I’ve only finished two of the Panzers that use these turrets, but as all the tanks have been based with dunkelgarb, I don’t believe my gaming buddies have noticed my laxness to date. I also sculpted an original little Flames of War objective for my DAK Germans, but haven’t got around to painting it yet.

I reviewed a couple of 28mm sci-fi products, Pig Iron Kolony heads and Hasslefree weapons that I intend to use for scratch building a Necromunda scavvie gang.

June, July, August

June and July were very quiet because it was the depth of winter and our whole family was fairly exhausted and often sick. However August I painted some 15mm Ancients, and knocked off a bunch of my Corvus Belli Carthaginians. This was an army I had intended to finish in 2008! I should certainly be able to knock them off early this year.

September, October, November, December

The release of Fallout 3 pretty much put paid to any hobby work at the end of the year as I played Fallout 3 for over a month straight each evening. All I achieved in these months was to start my Necromunda scavvie gang, which is based on a bunch of figures Daniel handed to me, and to finally build some 15mm flexible road strips for my North African Flames of War table.

Well that’s it. Goodness me, I really need to get stuck in this year. The recession means my hobby spending has also reduced, but like any hobbyist I have a large list of incomplete projects anyway. So 2009’s focus will be on finishing some of these – much like 2008’s was supposed to be! Anyway, hope you’ve all had a good Xmas and New Year! Roll on 2009.