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garbetsp

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Everything posted by garbetsp

  1. My final entry for this thread. Swamp Thing!
  2. Don't know how or if a bone golem is demonic but he's crashing this party.
  3. garbetsp

    Hellboy

    I've been getting a lot of table time with Hellboy. First of all it passes the wife test, my wife loves co-op and does not like head-to-head competitive. The rules are incredibly streamlined and easy in play to figure out (although the typos manage to make it difficult at times). In the core box you get a lot of really well sculpted miniatures that are a joy to paint. Setup and tear down are surprisingly quick. It plays like a dungeon crawler with a scenario deck driving setup, which has randomized encounters. These encounters fill a room with scenery, furniture, fires, swarms, and minions "A, B, C, and D" and may have a special rule for them. We even replay scenarios multiple times just because they are so fun and the randomization can create surprisingly different challenges. Each scenario deck maps A, B, C & D to minion cards that change depending on the scenarios. You always get three dice, and they upgrade or downgrade depending on circumstances, making it quick to figure out just what you get to roll. Each character sheet has special abilities, like Hellboy's "Big Right Hook", +3 damage and if it damages target is hurled and stunned. Allowing for Hellboy to throw a figure into another square and damage more enemies with a well placed hurl--or at least break some furniture with some minions head. What's really incredible is how well these mechanics end up recreating the pacing and flow from the comics. Like when Hellboy fires his big gun and manages to miss everything, or Lobster Johnson gets left behind dealing with a minion only to mysteriously reappear back with the group. Each turn the deck of doom flips driving a timer towards the final confrontation or creating some additional disability--like Hellboy gets angry and only wants to fight. At some point the game triggers the boss fight and he gets a special deck and the final confrontation begins. If the group has found enough clues, the final confrontation is usually not too difficult, but there will probably be a casualty or two before it's over. If the group hasn't gotten enough clues, then well it was nice knowing you. The only downside we've seen is that the scenarios are poorly scaled for 2 players and you pretty much have to play with 4 heroes unless you really like near impossible challenges and defeat. Also, the core box focuses on frog monsters. You will become familiar with frog monsters. The expansions are pretty much a must if you want something besides frog monsters. Also, it's the first game I know of that has a Krampus demon that can make a guest appearance and he comes to punish the naughty. I know what I'm playing on christmas. I might even make a Conan scenario deck for it, it would be a "Conan-lite" game. I've started painting the minis for it. Here's my first. It still has some touch up to go and basing.
  4. Akivasha and an alternate from Reaper that I liked as well.
  5. Not happy with the face on Belit savage. That's a surprisingly difficult one to paint well.
  6. How topical. I'm reading "The Shadow of Vesuvius". The first thing Pliny the Elder did when he saw the eruption in the distance is immediately order the navy to drive straight into it because he wanted a closer look. Folks were rushing his boat wanting out of there, and he was hand waving them off. He headed on to visit friends and take a nap as it rained pumice from the sky. He planned to hike in closer when the fumes finally overcame him.
  7. I clicked the link for the pledge manager. I entered my email and asked for a password reset. That's how I got in.
  8. Nice work. You and I are getting closer to having the first wave painted, just in time for the new expansion. There was a hiccup/glitch a couple years back and a few of my posts disappeared, and I had to repost one. Also, looking back my photography has improved. My Olgred pic is all grainy from a poor ISO, f/stop choice.
  9. I had a running query for the campaign to go live. Click my pledge within a second of it going live. Hoping for backer #1. Nope. Backer #50. It funded in 12 minutes. It looks like the first hour will have it exceed the Beyond the Monolith pledges when it was cancelled.
  10. Still need to do basing, but they are shambling along.
  11. This is exciting. I will definitely answer the call. Here's to hope that we get some Red Nails goodness.
  12. I have personally gotten much enjoyment and fun from all the previous Conan campaigns, miniatures and games. The campaigns created anticipation. I have enjoyed painting the miniatures, and the game play has led to many fun evenings around a table. Albeit sometimes horribly slanted one way or the other in balance. The rumours of more adventures of Conan have built anticipation for years. The sheer volume and scope of the previous campaigns is overwhelming. I suspect Fred is a tornado of ideas and I feel he is wonderfully creative. The problem is this works against long term business success. What's required for success in a creative endeavour like this is editing. (https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-lego-success-story-getting-everything-to-awesome/) Editing to trim the product line down, such that it is sustainable, generates positive cash flow and keeps existing customers happy while welcoming more is crucial to long term business success. I think Beyond the Monolith (BtM) was intended to move the product in this direction. However, the campaign and design is a huge misalignment of perceptions and expectations. Lurching from Kickstarter to Kickstarter is bound to hit a wall at some point. The current campaign has something for every customer archetype to be upset about. "Fanatics" who bought everything so far want more adventures. Yes there is a pledge for this, but what's in it? There was an expectation of boxes like the previous 3 expansions. So to get into the realignment, there's 5+ more boxes of what appears to be mostly duplicated content. The cubic meter of existing shelf space is already straining storage abilities of these customers to participate. The perception was made that all this existing content would get reused with a small versus box purchase. There's no real details of the far away lands that Conan will explore in the Legacy pledge. Fanatics expectations are not met, complaining ensues. "Catch-Up" is one who wants to catch up with the Fanatics. This really almost works for them, but maybe they got in on the Mythic Battles:Pantheon campaign. But to use that purchase they have to rebuy it all? There's really no way to get Core/King/Expansions/Books etc. Previous product line feels abandoned. Confusion sets in, how to do the catch up, questioning if this is really needed. If what went before was abandoned, do I really want to get 100% on this train? The perception of lack of commitment to prior offerings manifests. "Dabbler" is fine with a box or two here or there. Just wants a single thing to put on their shelf and pull down and play occasionally. They see a bunch of boxes and options and move on to the next campaign. Not really targetted to them (but could it be?). "Newbie" is curious what this about. To do that, they really love to see rule books and play through videos. What would be great is to get them in with a versus and convert them to a "Catch-Up" buying up existing content. They have to be won over. They can't get pre-existing content and see "Catch-Up" and "Fanatics" whinging non stop and back away. The sheer scope of offerings and options is not manageable without a lot more expensive logistics. Editing it all back to "Core Box", "King Box", "Not So Exclusive Box", "Expansion 1-3+" and a "Versus Box". Any given campaign for Conan would always include "Core" and "King" and rotate through other content. Operationalizing it should just be an order to the factories, we need X Core Boxes or what not. Yeah, as a backer I've become spoiled by so many choices--but the existing content needs simplicity of execution and availability to welcome new players for this to work long term for everyone. A Web site selling print runs really helps as well. Bottom line is to edit edit edit with business goals and customer categories in mind.
  13. The versus mode seems to be really upside down in many ways. I'm good with the Legacy upgrade for Adventure mode. That's all well and good. Getting into Versus mode. I already have 90% of the miniatures. The Legacy box gives me most of the other 10%. I don't want to just have piles of boxes and minis. I simply have run out of shelf space. The Mythic Battles upgrade packs are really the oddest offering. If you don't have Mythic Battles, but buy the versus mode packs--upgrading to be able to use them with your pre-existing Mythic Battle game (that you don't have) makes no sense. If you own Mythic Battles, then you already have all this, but if you want Versus mode you need to buy all the minis again just to get the tiles. Either way you don't need the upgrade packs. The use of the word scale to show the size of the miniatures completely misunderstands and destroys the meaning and definition fo the word scale. Scale is a ratio. Like 1:64. 25mm was this weird thing that got started in the 70's, to denote that a 6 foot tall man's eyes would be at the 25mm mark. People then referred to this as 25mm scale. Which meant the miniature was around 28mm tall. Then somehow people starting calling this 28mm scale and folks like "heroic" proportions so 28mm scale miniatures became 30mm tall. Now there is this absurd chart saying that every size of miniature is a different scale. This will only further confuse the whole thing. What is the ratio? That is the scale--not the measurement of the height of any given miniature. So, I'd love to get in on Versus mode and get a core box, but I'm not going to fill my shelf with duplications just to get some tiles to be able to play it. Adventure mode it is. Maybe in the future we'll get offered upgrade to versus tiles (the converse of the the MB offering).
  14. Given that Facebook openly participated and assisted Russian interference in elections here in the US. I have pulled the plug on any Facebook participation. I do wish this was the default platform for their news releases.
  15. I hope they have decent upgrade kits for the faithful.
  16. I see from that last photo that it was probably intended to be fold over boots. I thought they were just super bell bottoms. Lol. Should I repaint? I've not sealed yet.
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