Epaka

@Matt John S!!!!

I just listened to the first episode of the Podcast ‘Rogues in the House’, and only at the end did I realize that our own Matt John was one of the contributing voices. I thoroughly enjoyed the Podcast and I highly recommend it to anyone that is a fan of Sword & Sorcery in all it’s varied forms.

Great job Matt! I’ll be checking out all the other episodes and I hope it continues for a good long run. 

I know I’d certainly love to get Compendium 2 in English. I think there are a few factors at play here.

Monolith is centered in the French gaming community, which is fairly insular. They are more than happy to sell games to anyone, but they are definitely catering primarily to French gamers in many ways. The French version of The Overlord site is very very active. This English site, is not very active at all in comparison (which is a bummer). I sometimes feel like this whole site exists just so that about 20 of us die hard English language fans can communicate with each other...

Another factor may very well be the issues Monolith ran into with shipping the previous Compendiums worldwide. They got a lot of hate and spite from a handful of malcontents who were (understandably) pissed off when they didn’t get their copies of the first Compendium - due to cheap and spotty shipping methods. Some people even called them cheaters and thieves!

Yet another issue, is the licensing beef that Monolith has run into with Cabinet regarding Conan, and the resulting question about when (and if) Monolith will ever provide new Conan material via KickStarter. 

Add all that to the fact that Monolith is a business, and needs to generate revenue to stay viable. Hence, their focus on other games. I think that an English translation of Compendium 2 is probably number 286 on their to-do list...

Making some headway on getting Nemesis painted up. I’m mulling over paint schemes for the other alien types. The Queen and the Breeders will have a bit more color I think. 🤔 

Work in progress shots here, still need to attend to the bases. 

He looks great @garbetsp! As to your query, ALWAYS put blood on Conan’s axe!... always. 😈

11 minutes ago, garbetsp said:

I use a 3-d printed dice holder for the standees.

 

I'm clueless on the television reference.

 

 

It's Always Sunny in.... Philadelphia!

4 hours ago, Matt John S said:

@Epaka Oh man, I love the idea of using dice to track hp. That is the most fiddly part! What I want to do is find some numbered sticks in large quantites that I can stick to the top of exiting minis so I can have minis for the bad guys...

Or a little disk shaper dial type counter that can sit underneath the mini. 🤔

@Matt John S, I’ve seen that some peeps out there use other minis, including from Conan, instead of the cardboard standees for Gloomhaven. I might follow suit. I’m currently assembling one of those storage solutions for organizing Gloomhaven. I got the one from Daedalus instead of the one from Broken Token. It has a better look, doesn’t result in cover lift, and has nice etchings on the side so you know what everything is. I’ve also ordered a couple sets of 12-sides dice to use for tracking hit points for the baddies. I’ve seen others do that, and it looks like a better solution instead of having to refer back to the monsters card and count up tokens. 

Agreed @garbetsp... These are a real mixed bag of minis, and very different in every respect from most of the other minis I’ve painted. They are cartoonish, with a pretty wide range of quality and detail. Some I kinda like, others not so much. For example, the Spellweaver looks ok from the front or back, but at an angle you see that she was almost sculpted in 2D. She’s super flat, with no dimensionality to her. Of course, the minis in Gloomhaven are really an afterthought, and the creator of the game even acknowledged that he didn’t really want minis in the game at first. His desire to create a more Euro style game is evident throughout, even down to the art for the components and game board tiles. I’m looking at adding more bling to the game by building scenery using dental stone and silicone molds from Hirst Arts.  

All that said, I haven’t got it to the table yet, but I think we are going to love playing it!

I’m working to get the 6 starting heroes from Gloomhaven painted up so I can get that beast of a game to the table. It is interesting to tackle some High-Fantasy minis after the hundreds of Low-Fantasy minis I’ve painted for Conan. 

As per my usual MO, I’m trying to follow the game art in my color selections. It isn’t easy with this game though, since the game art has so many lighting effects and some fairly unusual color schemes going on. I’m fairly happy with them; not destined for a display case, but good enough for my game table!

I finished these peons awhile back, after I wrapped up the Winged Ape, but they are so beige and boring I never posted a pic... Well, here they are in all their, um, glory? 

I wanted to wrap them up quickly, so after priming in white, I used a small can of tan spray paint to give them all a base color, and then quickly hit them with varying skin tones and a few details. I had them all done in very short order. Nothing special, but hey, they are just members of the wretched masses after all. 😉

Yup @garbetsp. I’ve got entirely too much Conan stuff. A full collection of every English language Conan comic in existence, books, toys, statues, video games, board games, cards, etc, etc... 

I was actually happy that Dark Horse wrapped up their comics run, primarily because it never regained it’s footing after the execrable Queen of the Black Coast series (ugh, worst Conan comics ever!), but also because I don’t really want any more Conan stuff on my shelves. But, now that Marvel is back in the Conan game, I have no choice but to dive in. I hope it’s a return to the excellent quality of the earlier Marvel and DH efforts. 

A few weeks back I thought I was all done painting my All-In Conan pledge.... But I completely forgot about some remaining pieces of scenery that I had primed months ago. Well, NOW I’m truly all done with my painting chores for this game. Just in time too, as my copy of Nemesis from Awaken Realms arrived today... 

So, leaving behind the distant Hyborian age I’m now blasting off into the future with brush in hand!

side note: If you plan to paint the doors, I’d say it is probably easier to paint them unassembled. Also, there is a notch on the inside of the door frame that holds the door shut, you might want to cut it off or sand it down before painting; It’ll just chip off the paint if you don’t. 

I’d like to say that I won’t be buying whatever Shinobi comes out with.... But, as a Conan collector, I might be unable to resist. It sounds like they are doing a miniature game first, and then later a card game. I’ll look at it all with an unbiased eye, even though I’m more than happy with Monolith’s excellent game.

Honestly, I have to wonder if Monolith will even make a big effort to get the license back after Shinobi is done releasing their products. It sounds like there is at least a bit of bad blood between Monolith and CPI at this point. 

Gates done... Might have to redo the bases for the Accolytes... 🤔

Yellow Sign Desecration Tokens... I’ll prolly splatter them with some blood as a finishing touch.

Getting all the extras for Cthulhu Wars knocked out over the holidays. They have a unique ‘first player marker’, it’s a bust of Cthulhu Mythos creator H.P. Lovecraft... I tried to get a marble-ish look to it. It really makes more sense to give it a look akin to a sculpture, versus painting his head and shoulders as a human likeness with flesh color etc. 

I think that Monolith can still help publishing the fan-made Compendiums.  They aren’t ‘products’ that they are ‘selling’. They are just collecting money to offset printing and shipping costs. But I dunno...

9 hours ago, garbetsp said:

"The man who crucified Conan. The lover of Salome the witch." --Monolith

 

Happy Holidays to all.

 

 

 

 

Nice work dude. Love the basing too!

I often paint the color I want, hit it with shader, and then drybrush or carefully re-paint the area to get back my desired color AND get the shading effect. 

@BertD: The Army Painter Strong Tone is a fine shader, and will work nicely. I used it on most of my Conan minis. However, it is very brown. That seemed to work for rough and dirty low-fantasy warriors and monsters just fine, but I don’t know if it will fit into the colorful world of Batman quite the the same. The AP Dark Tone has a much more neutral ‘black’ effect. It is very dark though, so it will definitely darken your overall painting job. Ultimately I’m not sure that there is one shader that will work for everything you paint. For example, I recently painted the Viral Outbreak mini set for Pandemic, and I learned some hard lessons about shading modern-era colorful minis. There are colorful characters with yellow hazmat suits, and scientists with white lab coats. The Strong and the Dark shades made them look ‘dirty’. Fine for an orc, or Barbarian, but just not right for a mini that should look ‘clean’. I wound up using the AP Soft Tone for the faces and hands, and then either using a watered down Dark Tone for the clothing and doing a LOT of drybrushing to return clothing to a bright clean look. In the case of white lab coats, I didn’t shade them at all. It’s nice to have many options of shader. I don’t have experience with other brands, but the shader set sold by Army Painter that has several tones and colors has given me a lot of options. With the Conan minis, I found that painting armor with gold paint and then following up with a red shader would give me a very nice copper effect. Or painting chainmail or platemail with silver and then following up with blue shader made for a cool looking effect. Options are key with shading, I could possibly see wanting a blue shader for a blue rendition of Batman’s cape, as an example. I’m painting the Gates for Cthulhu Wars now, and the colored shaders are working great. Another example; I got a nice ‘Ice’ effect on the gates by applying blue shader directly to the white primer and then using a sponge with white paint over that. The red shader is working well over red paint on the Black Goat’s Gates. So, again, options are nice...

Will do! So glad to see the community being so active with this game. 

Ok, scratch that previous question... I see the additional VPs that are listed in the win conditions for the scenario 'Fight or Flight'. So, my new question is this; are we supposed to add  the VPs listed in that scenario to the 1 VP awarded for a win, as per the instructions on the bottom of page 3? Or does the win conditions for 'Fight or Flight' replace the 1 VP normally awarded for a win?... Thanks in advance for any clarification. 🙂

@Ken, @Matt John S; Hey guys, I've finally printed out the campaign and look forward to giving it a play very soon. It looks great, congrats on all the hard work! 

Reading through it, I have one question right away (although I may have others eventually)... If Victory Points are added up at the end of the 4th scenario, and winning a scenario is worth 1 Victory Point, why is there a potential bonus listed for 5 Victory Points? How would the Heroes or the Overlord possibly have 5 VPs?...

I happened upon a pic of Khel from way back when. He was pretty early on in my Conan mini painting adventures, and I would almost like to take another stab at him actually. At the very least I’d like to add some red eyes now... Meh, as always, I’m painting for the game board, not a museum. 

As a huge fan of Pandemic, I’ve picked up the Cthulhu spin-off. It’s a good game IMO. It’s different enough from the original Pandemic to hold my interest, but still keeps the same cooperation and strategic thinking that makes the original game such a winner. I recently painted the (admittedly middling) minis that came with the game. This is a pretty crappy pic, so I’ll eventually get around to taking some better ones.