Getting ready for an Arena Rex event at my house so I painted up three figures for a friend and one for myself to fill in some holes we had in our Ludus.
The first three our for my friend, and the fourth is for my ludus.
Alrighty M.K. (you know who you are), you've thrown down the gauntlet of super coolness with Arena Rex. You've got the group all jazzed up about having a few games, I'm obviously painting, are you? In fact R.G. and M.M. you better get off your butts and start painting your Ludus as well. I now have five finished and May isn't that far away boys. Let's do this!
Today I finished another gladiator for my Ludus Magnus. Septimus is his name and I think this is the best job I've done yet on painting flesh. Thank goodness though he is wearing a helmet. I just hate painting faces.
Here are a few pictures to get you guys motivated to paint, and for the rest of my groupies to have a gander at.
One of my favorite poses for my Ludus we have "Iason" here. It makes me think of the Spartacus Movie with the legend Kirk Douglas himself who sadly passed away in 2020 at 103 years. Old age got to him and not the blade of an opponent in the Arena.
I replaced the spear with a metal one cause the resin one supplied just sucked as far as sturdiness goes (not artistically, but game survivability).
I think I did a little better on the skin job, and my greatest art critic (my wife) at first gave it a thumbs down, told me it needed a little dry brushing to bring down the starkness of it, didn't believe her, had a huff about it, but in the end she was right. Now I am one step closer on my journey of learning to paint skin like the pros (thank you honey).... but I do thank the gods I only have a few more left so I can go back to painting lifeless robots.
I absolutely hate painting skin. A face and hands, okay. Half naked Gauls, Greeks, Gladiators, not okay.
I trudged on, and did the best okay for the moment. One day, hopefully, a light bulb will come on and it will be like, this wasn't so hard.
This bad boy is Hermes. A couple pics of him and one of him standing next to Atrox the Tiger. Oh and I included Urbicus with Atrox as well.
No fancy pictures here, just calling this done to the best of my current painting ability. I could do touch ups and tweak it a bit more but it looks good enough in my hand to play on table, so why take a chance and mess it up I ask. Well I asked myself because in the end that’s who it really matters to;) May it please the Gods when it enters the arena for his meal.
Atrox is like this God Tiger. I haven’t taken a photo of him next to a gladiator yet, but he is huge! Tomorrow I give him a gloss coat and later a mat one and it will be finished. Once that’s done I will try and take a photo next to a gladiator.
Arena Rex set in Rome 1253 AUC. This is not the world you know. The Republic and the Empire thrive. Arenas dot the landscape. Warriors from lands both known and unknown perform upon the sands for the chance at freedom, riches, and eternal glory.....
So says the beginning entry on the Arena Rex page. A 35mm beautifully sculpted resin game that can be played on a lazy Saturday afternoon with friends and a few frothy beers. There are many different Ludus's to pick from, and you can mix and match to your hearts content. You can make your own arenas, or simply use the rubber mouse like pad they sell. You play with 3, 5, or 8 figures on a side.
I have chosen my ludus to be Ludus Magnus and have painted up my first gladiator. Urbicus is a cool little figure, I love his sculpted fighting pose. He is also the first dark skinned figure where I have been happy on how the skin tones came out.
If your looking for a post full of nicely painted miniatures you can stop here.....
But if your looking for a good (hopefully) story of two gentlemen starved of having not been able to get together to do their hobby thing, then please by all means continue reading.
For a quick run up to todays game let's start back in March of 2019. A good friend of mine and I decided to try going to Adepticon out in Chicago. Normally we frequent historically conventions, but we both dabble in the scifi and fantasy world. We heard good things about Adepticon and so we thought we'd try it out.
Boy did we have a riot! I am so happy to have experienced it. Like 6,000 people were there. I've never been to a convention of this size. We got to do our Infinity thing (Scifi), meet some of my Youtube hero's (yes I am a groupie), and participate in all kinds of Demo's. This is where Arena Rex comes into our story. We played in a Demo, and the next thing you know we dropped at least a 100 bucks each before we left the booth.
So when we get home we (probably like the majority of gamers) took our booty and stuffed it neatly on our shelves with the intent of painting up our purchased models very soon.
Well that didn't happen, of course. We did assemble our miniatures at one point during 2019, and my friend did paint one figure, I on the other hand started a couple and just ran out of gas.
Then March of 2020 happens. The World stopped spinning, and I desperately held onto my coffee table to keep from floating away.....
Okay seriously that's not exactly what happened, but it sure did feel like it.
Being in the age danger zone, and having underlying health issues, I had to hunker down. I learned like any other hobbyist that Skype, Zoom, Discord, and all those other ways to connect gave us all a chance to at least game online and be able to see the other person and communicate to another human being.
Some of my bloggers I follow are in Countries where they have covid under control and can game in person, others have gotten together outside and worn masks to get their fix.
With these ideas and enough time having gone by and the numbers low in my State, I finally (gently suggested by my friend) decided to get together and play a game outside face to face this past weekend, well today in fact.
No my figures still are not painted, and my friend only has one painted. But at this point it was damn the torpedoes and full gaming ahead! It being more important to get together and share the gaming experience, then to create a beautiful spectacle.
This brings you to today, and the game (Arena Rex). This would be our first game, so we went for the 3 vs 3 for novice level. We will work our way up to the 5 on 5's or 8 on 8's later. Now it was more important to learn the game and get a feel for the tactics. My friend brought his Cleopatra themed Ludus, and I my Roman themed Ludus.
We scrambled around the board and around the middle of the game we started to get a feel for it. We forgot a few of our gladiators special abilities, but we learned alot about how to move our gladiators around for the next match. I very much felt that I was in control after taking done two of his gladiators only to find out that the last man standing rule is pretty awesome, combined with the fact that his last man standing was a beast.
The game ended up very close. I had only one gladiator left, Hermes, when the battle ended but his figure had a special rule that before he bites the dust he gets a free attack. He came within two wounds of taking down the mighty (and bloodied) Hermes.
It was an intense, fun, and glorious time. Flexing our biceps, shouting out gladiator quips like, are you not entertained! Etc. If the weather holds out this Fall, I do so much look forward to our next battle in the Arena!
Here is a photo run down in the order that things happened....
[Below I present the owner of Ludus Magnus on the left (me), and owner of Ludus Morituri on the right (my friend)
Cheers and as always thanks for stopping by and having a look
Kevin
