Core Space

 Core Space is a board game/miniature game. It is a great solo game, as well as a cooperative game. Up to six players could play, but it's sweet spot is 2 or 3, or simply solo.

Basically this is a science fiction themed game where you run a ships crew to investigate planets, asteroids, space hulks etc. on the outer rim of the known universe looking for stuff to sell and basically keep your crew paid and your ship running. Where the fun comes in is that the Purge has been invading the outer rim and absorbing all kinds of matter and sending it through the wormhole to some unknown destination. Kind of like Star Treks Borg, you will be assimilated kind of stuff. Roughly that's what this is about, space opera galore.

So I've had the basic game forever, got tired of waiting for the plague to end and decided I needed a good solo game to invest some time into. Problem is I am painting Space Hulk dudes for a friend and that was in the way. So I weighed my options, put down the Space Hulk, and knocked out the dozen or so figures I needed to play the game with. I have successfully done this and can go back to painting Genestealers for my friends Space Hulk game, and I am able to play my game to boot. 

I am patting myself on the back right now if you can't tell. 

So here are a few of the toys I put out. 

First up are the Core Space Civilians that are non player characters you interact with during the game.

[Below is Haori]

[Butler]

[Gan'eek]

Next up is my space adventuring crew from the space craft Skylark. There are four characters.

[Cpt Weaver, cigar smoking badass]

[Marlowe, kind of like the first mate]

[Faye, the rookie]

[last but not least my fav, MAC]

Finally the villains', the scary Purge...

[Harvesters]

[Devastators]

[the deadly Assassin]

[the orchestrator of all things death the Live One]

That's it, all my lads and ladies ready to do some butt kicking fun. If you made it all the way down to here, thanks for looking and see you next time.

Cheers

Kevin

 

Chuck Yeager

 Another one of my heroes gone, Rest In Peace sir, another door closes on the golden era. He was 97 years old.

Adeptus Titanicus madness over takes me!!!

 Okay so I haven't posted in a bit, just haven't had the mojo to do so. That does not mean I have been idle, well sort of, but not completely.

So some of you know I am painting mini's for a Space Hulk commission that I just can't seem to wrap my painting focus completely on. In fact I am almost done with the Terminator Librarian and just needed a break. I so happened to watch one of my favorite Youtube channel hero's in Ash Barker of Guerrilla Miniature Games who just did a recent vid on playing a game of Adeptus Titanicus. That's all it took, I dropped what I was doing, pulled my Warlord Titan off the shelf that has not had any love for eight months and went to work on it. I completed it yesterday, and I have to say I had a blast doing it. In fact it's got my painting juices going again and I now think I can turn back to my Space Hulk project refreshed and focused... that's the plan anyway.

Here are a few pictures of the process and then the final pictures follow of it completed.

[below in progress shots]

 [Below completed shots]

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin

Space Hulk: Blood Angels commission

 Haven't been around for a while. Just burned out from everything that has happened to all of us in 2020. Just bananas. No motivation to paint, because why if you can't get together to game with your friends. On top of that winter is coming, not the Game of Thrones kind, but if feels as epic with the invisible enemy amongst us. The days are whirling by at an astounding rate, at least to me, but the last week or so I've started to see through my cloudy vision. 

I've actually painted up 9 Blood Angels Terminators out of 13 I have to complete, plus a little robot thingy. This has given me a feeling of success and accomplishment that I hope will propel me in the coming weeks to complete them. Then I have like 24 Genestealers to paint, and while those are not difficult to paint of course Games Workshop would make them mini vignettes with them climbing all over bulkheads and dangling wires and such. Gads! 

But the Termies where definitely the more difficult to paint and I am glad I tackled them first. This will give my non painting friend a very nice looking set of miniatures to play on his board. Then I can finally, finally, finally start painting stuff for me.

Yes meeeeeee! I have so many things I want to paint just for the joy of painting them, and not necessarily to game with. Any positive feeling this year is a good thing I say.  

Well without further ado I present to you the nine. First all nine, one at a time, as front views. Then a few group photos from behind. I hope you enjoy my work.

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin

Day of the Long Shadows an Arena Rex Adventure

 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)

[ Ludus Morituri setup below]

[Ludus Magnus setup below]

[Gladiators feeling out the Arena]

[Below the engagement begins in earnest]

[Ludus Magnus regroups after taking down an opponent]

[Ludus Magnus has a man go down, but a fierce counter attack takes another opponent with him, advantage Ludus Magnus or so I thought until we discovered the Last man Standing rule bit]

[My opponent having struck down another of my Gladiators, it was now up to Hermes to bring home the glory for Rome! He is successful but finds to his dismay not to turn his back on a what he thought was a fallen opponent as he takes a last swing before his last breath, nearly taking down Hermes as well]

[Hermes, VICTOR, waves his sword above his head to the cheering crowd, wounds everywhere, it takes all his strength to stand, but the crowd chants his name as it echoes off the arena walls]

Cheers and as always thanks for stopping by and having a look

Kevin