That was fine until I borrowed Chris’s Dremel 300 and he pointed out Test’n'Tools sell Dremel in New Zealand for sane prices.

After using a Dremel tool first hand I can understand why people recommend them and I’ve picked up the basic Dremel 300 kit for $99nzd and added a keyless chuck so I can re-use my motley collection of bits.

For any hobbyists in New Zealand I’d heartily recommend Test’n'Tools for their reasonable prices, wide selection and excellent customer service. My order was dispatched the day after I placed it and arrived a day later in my PO Box. It’s always nice to find a local site that fast!

Related posts:

1. GW New Zealand Prices
2. Handmade Tool Roll

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.

Related posts:

1. Review: Pig Iron Kolony Rebel Heads
2. Review: Hasslefree Sci-Fi Weapons
3. Review: Anglian Miniatures Moroccans

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.

Related posts:

1. Space Hulk and Another Hobby
2. Poll Roundup: How Many Unfinished Armies?
3. Poll Roundup: Do You Paint for Display?

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!

Related posts:

1. Space Hulk: Dipped Genestealers Group

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.

Related posts:

1. GW New Zealand Prices
2. Dipping Orcs – Warhammer
3. Dipping Orcs Ranked Up – Warhammer

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.

Related posts:

1. Dustan: HeroQuest Redux – Part 1
2. Poll Roundup: Do You Paint for Display?
3. Handmade Tool Roll

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?

Related posts:

1. Magic: Morningtide Sneak Peek Tourney
2. Adventures in Jimland!
3. Dustan: HeroQuest Redux – Part 1

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.

Related posts:

1. 2006 Annual Roundup
2. 2007 Annual Roundup
3. Fallout 3

However after playing at least 6-8 hours a week for the last couple of weeks I’ve maxed out my character and am plan to finish the main story line before Xmas. So hopefully normal programming will resume in the New Year. I’ve certainly got a slew of hobby projects backed up that I really want to knock off – mainly because some require almost minimal effort to complete.

Related posts:

1. Office Gaming Lunches
2. 2008 Annual Roundup
3. Scrap Dragon sell Pig Iron Products

Way back around 1989 Games Workshop and Milton Bradley got together and produced HeroQuest. Set in GW’s Warhammer Fantasy world it recreates the adventures of four Heroes who battle the minions of the evil wizard Morcar (Zargon in America). I decided to paint up this set as something to play with my son who is turning six soon. This is the fourth set I’ve painted, for some reason they always seemed expendable when it came clearing out the cupboards, now it’s out of production I wont let this one escape me!

HeroQuest is a game for 2-5 players and comes with 35 miniatures, 15 pieces of furniture, 20 doors, a large game board and a host of cards, counters and dice. The rules are brief and simple and the quest book contains 14 Adventures. There is no system for creating dungeons as you go however a blank game map was supplied and later an adventure design kit was released.

The board consists of a grid of floor tiles with fixed walls, rubble tokens would block access to some areas to help change the shape of the map. In later expansions overlays were used to radically change the map by adding grassy caves, chasms and other special features.

The Heroes (Barbarian, Wizard, Elf and Dwarf) move around the board with 2d6 movement and are able to search for treasure, traps and secret doors. Combat is resolved using a special set of combat dice, the number of dice thrown in attack or defense was dependent on the combatant’s stat lines.

Searching for treasure allows the players to draw a random treasure card which could be anything from potions, gems, gold, items and even traps or wandering monsters. Each quest has an objective for the Heroes to complete, if they failed either by leaving the dungeon or being killed the Evil Wizard claims victory.

The game is not without its flaws. These issues were addressed by the later GW release of Advanced HeroQuest, which sadly is a little to complicated for casual play. HeroQuest’s flaws are:

• It’s designed more as a board game rather than an RPG it seems to suggest the Heroes  are competing against each other for treasure, this is of course dependant on your players.
• The random movement distances can really slow down this game, particularly if you are a low roller.
• Due to the use of equipment and treasure playing cards expanding the game relied on MB releasing expansions.

Despite this HeroQuest is a good gateway game and I hope it will encourage my son and later my daughter into the hobbies that have permeated my life.

There are many resources out there with new quests, printable tiles and house rules. I have included a few of my favourites to get you started.

• Ye Old Inn – Build your own set with complete scans of all the card components and rules
• HeroScribe – Mapping tool for quest building.
• Old Scratch’s HeroQuest Forum – Dedicated forums, some of the 3d dungeons are neat.

In the next post I’ll show you my work on painting the Heroes and furniture.

Related posts:

1. Review: Song of Blades and Heroes
2. Office Gaming Lunches
3. Dice Wars

These figure collections seem squarely aimed at Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k players and they look like a nice cheap way of throwing together a representation of a GW Fantasy army in a few evenings. Alas at the moment One Monk only sell an Undead Battalion, but it seems they have plans for a range of Fantasy armies, amongst other things.

Given that it takes me a few evenings to paint one GW 28mm scale figure, I’m tempted to buy a few of these PDFs print them out and break out a sharp scalpel to round out my incomplete Warhammer Vampire Counts army. Building a paper army like this is also probably a more cost effective way of trying out a new Warhammer army before committing to purchasing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars of expensive GW figures – assuming you want to try Undead at the moment!

Another good use for this kind of army would be introducing your kids to Games Workshop games without the worry of having them game with your collection of fragile, hand painted figures! I’ll be keeping an eye out for future One Monk releases.

Related posts:

1. Poll Roundup: How Many Unfinished Armies?
2. More Orcs from Imperial Games – Warhammer
3. Poll Roundup: Black or White Primer?

Generally I don’t purchase boosters these days, preferring to buy individual cards from King of Cards locally, or ordering online from Star City Games or Card Kingdom (who accept PayPal btw). However there is certainly some appeal in blowing a few dollars occasionally and seeing if you get anything interesting. I also find random booster purchases occasionally guide your hand towards deck creation if you draw a particularly juicy Rare.

As boosters are usually opened in store and rifled through for decent cards, I was interested to see this recent article on the Magic site which describes the ‘Pack War’ concept. As a fairly new Magic player this is the first time I’d heard of Pack Wars, although it’s obviously not that new a Magic concept.

From the article: in Pack Wars you simply combine one fresh booster pack and three of each basic land (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest) and play that using normal Magic rules as a 30 card ‘mini-deck’. It also works best if you play blind by shuffling the opened booster into the lands without examining the cards.

My gaming mates and I have tried it a couple of times with various boosters and it works surprisingly well, although you do tend to get a little flooded with lands. However the Eventide block adds the new Retrace (video link) keyword to Magic which allows you to re-play certain cards from your graveyard by discarding a land card in your hand. Even as a Magic rookie it’s obvious that Retrace cards will go some ways towards addressing issues with Mana flood that occur to any Magic player occasionally, not to mention make the end game more interesting (and also increase the utility of creatures like Yixlid Jailer).

I suspect our regular Friday Magic gaming lunches will probably become Eventide ‘Pack War’ lunches for the next little while, at least until we collectively tire of purchasing boosters.

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1. Magic: Morningtide Sneak Peek Tourney
2. Hello… I Play Magic
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The figures look reasonably well sculpted and both the scale and price is right for my tastes, however I have no idea what rule-set these figures are intended for? I assuming they’re designed to be used with Horde of the Things which is a Fantasy variant of the DBA Ancients rules.

Unfortunately after some searching I simply cannot find a distributor for these rules locally or on the web. The rules were created in 1991 so there’s a good chance they’re simply out of print! Can anybody suggest an Australian or New Zealand supplier that might carry a copy of Horde of the Things?

Related posts:

1. GW New Zealand Prices
2. One Monk Paper 30mm Armies
3. Hot Wheels Stop Motion

As you can imagine (or if you’ve been through something similar) this has been a shock to all our family and friends, particularly considering how healthy Dad had been for most of his life. Naturally it’s also made us all look at our own lives and how we’ve been living them and all I can say is don’t take anybody you care about for granted because they may be gone tomorrow.

We visited Dad every day he was in hospital and then we had to organise and attend his funeral, which explains the lack of posts in the last month or so. Hopefully I’ll start posting again soon.

Take care.

On this theme, John Campbell on TV3 last night mentioned ‘Expedition Saharan Saunter 2009′ which is a group of Long Range Desert Group re-creators:

“We are planning an Expedition to follow the footsteps (or wheel ruts) of the brave men of the LRDG and cover some of the routes and battlefields in the western desert. This will be a dynamic site updated regularly to keep all informed of our exciting project.”

Sounds like a hell of a challenge to me and I’ll be interested to see how they get on next year!

Related posts:

1. FOW: Three Month Painting Challenge
2. FOW: Three Month Painting Challenge Long Gone
3. Space Hulk: Dipped Genestealers Group