So, you wanna be the master of…Malifaux?

Do you have the skills to be…..come a bro?

I wanna beeee the veeeery best, that no one ever waaaas.

Sorry folks. It’s been a Pokemon kind of day

So, recently, I have been playing a bit of the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and actually thoroughly enjoying it. To be fair, I do not versus other players – I just use the stock standard trainer decks it gives you and battle the occasional NPC.

This got me in the mood for buying packs, something I find highly additive, exciting and often soul crushing.

ANYWAY, I get home with my little foil sealed packets of potential devastation and find this:

So on the left is my “bonus foil” and on the right is my “1 x rare”. They were actually the same card. What are the odds, ey??

Apparently pretty damned high. This has now happened to me a good 5-7 times. What is the go? Is it because the set has so few cards in it!? Or do I have magical pack-picker talons on me?

This got me in a nostalgic mood for checking out some of my older collection..

I miss the days where “foil” actually meant, do not expose to direct sunlight as you might burn a hole in the ozone with the reflection bouncing off of that bad-boy.

While I was digging these out of their super-secret-hidey-space I found a bunch of clippings I’d put into a folder with my cards.

Wow, $109.90!? Are you dicking with me? Should probs be nicer to the parents, the struggle to afford to raise a nerdy child was real.

Moving right along…I have been continuing to paint my Seamus Malifaux ladies – although, one of my hookers in tights appears to have gone missing. I cannot tell you, how devastating that is to me, to own a “set” that is not in fact “complete”. Like for MULTIPLE reasons, this is heavily upsetting. But we soldier on.

Wanna see me twerk it to Katy Perry’s – This is how we do?

So, unfortunately, I didn’t know that the angle I was on was casting such an orange hue over my photo – but we work with what we’ve got. The back of her dress is getting some highlighting and her skin is undergoing a little correcting time.

I actually dropped the whole mini in my drive way, skinning the paint off of her face, knees and the front of her dress directly after painting this.

Yooooou dropped me!? ME? Have you seen me? I’m amazing. I don’t know if we can hang out anymore, Ellie.

I tried my best to fix her back up, but she undeniably now had some uneven textures and variations in colour. Ah well, if anyone asks I’ll say she’s growing lumps.

Well, as per always, great chats! We should do this again soon.

~ El

Advertisement

Painting, Paining and Clock Work Gaming!

Hello lovely people!

Recently, I traveled to Geelong (Australia) for the Clock Work Dragon event.
This was a Warmachine Tournament charity event for raising food for the homeless.

Wait! One of these guys is a slow walker.

Although I wasn’t competing in this event – I was volunteering and running around being an all general pest with my phone camera.

The event was 3 rounds (35pt) of 6 competing teams of 5.

During the lunch intermission, everyone signed their name in front of their army (or specific model) and left for lunch allowing for painting judging to proceed.

It was AMAZING to see some of the things people had painted.
The names of the painters have been cropped out as I don’t want to be posting people’s names – but how awesome are these!? I love seeing other peoples beautiful work.

In the end, the event raised over 4000 cans of food for the homeless!!

Awesome effort from everyone! And now my upper arms know the meaning of paint when it came time to moving that from the room to the various charity cars.

AAAANY how, in Ellie land, I have been getting back into painting! I finally have some free time after settling into my new office and my new role at work.

Hello, I will be your waitress for this evening. Do you prefer to be roasted? Or fried?

Her skin did NOT come out at all how I intended. My idea was to give her a kind of purple hue to make her look a bit pasty and dead. Instead, I just ended up making her look actually skin toned.
Ugh – ah well.

Oh oh oh, my other news! Everyone, gird your loins.
PAX 2015 is upon us.

Well – love you all! See you again next time for another ‘Things I have been doing, without any coherent style of commentary’.

~Ellison

My Sky has a Rim on it

When The Elder Scrolls Skyrim came out, I was wholly obsessed with it.  To the point, that I got tired of missing out on all the pretty texture packs of the PC users (as I was playing on PS3 at the time) and literally went out and built a computer JUST for Skyrim.

After all this time – it would appear I am obsessed again. Hahaha.

Onto the adventures!!

I started myself a new Warhammer wielding bringer of death, collected my Lydia (aka. Chlamydia) and took on the world.

Hey Chlamydia, go easy on the contouring ey? You look like you have a 5 o’clock shadow… I mean heeeey gurl, looking on fleak today!

So Lydia and I start stomping around the country side. First priority, is to visit every city so that I have a fast travel point for near by questing.

Stopped by Markath to solve some murders and buy some goods.

I reaaaallly have to question  what that meat he’s holding is. Because when you’re just a torso trying to sell me large chunks of mystery flesh – I start to ponder being a vegetarian.

Now, one of the other things I’ve been doing is trying to get the 15 Daedric Artifacts. These tend to be fairly high in stats and look a bit fancy, so I picked myself up the Savior’s Hide. Now, this was the most powerful piece of Armour I had at the time so I was of course wearing it.

While this armour looks a bit skankeriffic in general, I wasn’t fully aware of HOW skanky it was until I got a kill cam on a Dragon.

I can imagine what the towns people are saying while I defend their city from the flying lizards.

Look friends! It’s the great Dovakin here to save us from the…oh my! Kids, cover your eyes.

The second Daedric Artifact I got was ALSO a piece of armor. While it may not be as revealing as the first, I’m pretty sure my epic mustache mask has it’s own level of seduction.

New from Victoria’s Secret – the Mustache Night-Mask. Now only $499.00.

While Chlamyd’s and I were dungeoneering, I found this odd shaped ball. Figured that it would look nice at home on the mantle to shoot sparks at and pretend we’re having he worlds most ancient disco when suddenly a voice emanates from it asking me to return it to it’s rightful place.

As I am not in the business of robbing others of their party goods, I promptly followed the instructions and went to find the shindig to ask if we were invited and could my trusty follower come as a +1?

When I arrived, it turned out that the voice was coming from some sort of statue in the middle of who-knows-where.

Have you considered Tindr? Your love can reach a radius pre-determined in the settings.

I stepped up, as I’m not one to judge the race of others, far be it for me to tell a statue they can’t hook up and party, and placed the disco ball into the nook at the bottom when suddenly I get launched into the air.

Ok lady, calm your various light beams, and put me back on the ground. I’m not into your weird sky events.

Meridia, who turned out to be the god of infinite energy asked me to go turn on the lights for the party in her old temple.
Lydia was a fan of the idea despite telling me 18 bloody times “I don’t like the look of this”, but then again, she might of been catching her reflection in the pool of blood on the floor.

I flick all these reflective balls on, and the temple starts to light up – which is far more the party I was hoping for.

You’ll be coming home with me tooooniiiiiight, and we’ll be burning up like neeeeon liiiiiights

So cool, the lights are on. I go to leave the temple and let Meridia know she’s ok to start letting the guest know that they can start arriving when this AWFUL, and I mean AWFUL dude leaps out and starts shooting me with ice shards.

Normally, I’m ok with someone gettin’ all mad that there is a party happening in their house and they weren’t invited – because that’s just rude, but this guy just kept at it.

Wouldn’t listen to reason so had to give him a beat down and let him know that it was not ok to just start shooting at people when suddenly, he changes into his party gear.

On second thoughts Meridia, I don’t think I like your friends. We might give the party a miss.

After putting down the scary bro at the end of the temple, Lyds and I head back to let Meridia know what happened, and show her this cool sword we picked up when suddenly she get’s all cult on me and asks if I want to preach her religion of Tindr fans and party goers.

Sorry but, there is no other word appropriate here except a really loud NOPE.

Well, that is the end of the adventures for the time being.

Tune in next week for another episode of Skanks with Swords.

Kick-off 2015 with Kromaster

Hello friends!!

So to ring in 2015, the Painting Sage and I decided to bust out my Kromaster Arena board game that I picked up at PAX Australia.

This is a cool little fantasy fighting boardgame where you use the characters spells and abilities to chase down and attack your opponent.

Now, to be absolutely honest, the primary reason I got this game was because it looked BLOODY cute. Like, this is adorable. But, another reason I was drawn towards this, is that I am really not one for lengthy super involved rules.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a game with depth, but if I need to spend an hour on YouTube to work out how to set up the map then Ellie’s out. You can find me over at the other table playing Munchkin.

This game has a big rule book, with mini-maps that act as a step by step tutorial! We figured we’d take advantage of the nice weather outside (once a year where I live, seriously) and have a game outside in the shade.

There is dialogue facing the other player and an in depth explanation of the rule you’re learning to the left. This was the tutorial for basic movement, terrain interaction and attack.

As things became more complex, the map got a little bigger and the characters started multiplying to work together. In the above photo I was playing “Sheep guy” and the “Hooded con man”.

You can also buy “booster” boxes with additional characters. Even though we didn’t play with these guys today, I had purchased these when I picked up the board game itself.

I love that the boosters come with their own token set. You beauty! I hate nothing more than adding things to a game where you have to “pretend this token is this”.

I don’t want to really give this a x/10 at the moment, as we only went so far as the tutorials to start – but so far this is shaping up to be HEAPS of fun. Can’t wait for a couple more rounds of this – and to try out the expansion! (Yes, I’m that person that purchases the cool looking expansion before they even know if they like the base game *ehem*).

Blogger Tag: Best Games of 2014

So, in going with the write tag given out by ‘What’s your Tag?‘, I am going to do a quick list of the best games I played in 2014.

Now, I would like to re-state the ‘I PLAYED IN 2014’ part. These are not necessarily 2014 releases, and they are in no particular order other than the one my brain remembered them in!

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (Nintendo 3DS)
– To be absolutely fair to all other games, this made it to my list partially because of my love for the Pokemon series of games. It is highly probable that the reason I thought it was an amazing game, is because of the same reason I loved all of it’s predecessors. BECAUSE, GUYS, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU KNOW BUT YOU CATCH BADARSE PETS WITH SUPER POWERS. What’s not to love?

The Last of Us (Playstation 3)
– This was just one of the most epic games I have ever played. To be absolutely honest, I felt like I had been thrown into the middle of this amazing movie and told to hit the ground running. I plan on buying a PS4 soon – this will be being re-purchased purely to play it on my new console. I’m not even kidding.

Beyond Two Souls (Playstation 3)
– Basically, see above. Epic story. Amazing acting. Love love love. Also, you may not have heard, but there was boob.

7 Days to Die (PC)
– I’m sure most people are familiar with this title, but I have literally not stopped wanting to play this game since I got it. Originally recommended to me by the Painting Sage, I was somewhat hesitant to purchase an alpha game with such a hefty price tag ($30AUD) – but it turned out to be money well spent for all the hours, with all the different friends I have spent killing zombies and building ridiculous looking forts.

Don’t Starve (+ Together BETA, PC)
– This, for the same reason as 7 Days to Die, made it on the list for the sheer amount of time I have enjoyed running around with friends quickly hording supplies for our camp – and adventuring off on my own to discover underground monster caves filled with fresh carrots and glowing bushes, this is a game I am happy to have spent my money on.

Well, I might leave that there, at a shortish list of a couple of games that particularly stood out to me over 2014 “vidja gaming”. I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple of epic things I played, but for right now – this is it.

I wish you all a fantastic 2015 and hopefully by 2016 I’ll be posting “Best holodeck games I played this year” … no? pipe dreaming? drat.

~ Always, Elison

Sushi Go!

So I recently had the opportunity to attend a new local table top gaming club (mostly focused on boardgames and card games than miniatures) and got to play a little card game called Sushi Go!

I have to admit, I had an absolute ball with this game! Rules that probably took under 2 minutes to explain and comprehend, coupled with some very cute packaging and art made it an attractive game to want to invite others to play.

Please note: This image is not mine, it was sourced from Purple Prawn

The basic concept is:
1. Each person is dealt 8 cards from the deck.
2. From these 8 cards you pick 1 and place it face down
3. Hand the remaining 7 cards in your hand to the person next to you
4. Once everyone has handed over their hand, they flip over the face-down card and then pick another card, face it down, hand on the 6
5. Repeat process until all cards are used up, tally up your cards and put them into the discard pile (leaving pudding cards out in front of you)
6. Deal another fresh 8 from the deck to everyone and continue in this manner until the deck is gone.

The idea is that you want to collect cards to obtain the most points. From the image above, the green “sashimi” cards, need you to collect 3 of them to get the 10 points, but the blue “dumplings” merely grow from a minimum of 1 point with each additional dumpling and so on.

Image source: IndieGogo

If you’re looking to have a games night with some friends that aren’t into the bigger board games, or want to game with kids, or merely need a simple ice-breaker for a new gaming group I would definitely recommend this!!

All of my friends are getting a copy of this from me this year. Hahaha.

A colour scheme from hell…

As promised! A new mini!

Now, please keep in mind that this miniature is:
1. Only half done
and
2. Was intended to be ‘themed’ for Wyrd’s Halloween painting contest Rotten Harvest.

The colour scheme currently looks a bit tragic, but I’m really hoping that with her equally themed BASE attached, it will all make sense in the end.

The beginning…

She was originally primed (air gun sprayed) with an all dark yellow and then a light yellow to have a go at the whole pre-shading concept. So far I’m liking how this works.

The glowing eyes were step by step explained to me by beloved Painting Sage. I think I might con him into doing a tutorial. Not only for my future reference, but a few people have asked me how it was done, and I’d like to be able to link to the source of the wisdom.

From there, she progressed to getting her colours in. Can anyone guess what I’m trying to accomplish with those horrid colours? hahaha.
Well, even if not, all will be revealed eventually!

Highlighting the orange actually blew my mind, because it started as red, and from there ALL I could see was red – I was convinced it was not looking like orange. Painting Sage had to tell me it was time to put the brush down before I had an aneurysm.

Last session I worked on her, she got her hair. This is the first time I’ve attempted a proper ‘brunette’, and her hair has a lot of ‘layers’ making it easier to highlight than most so I’m really hoping it comes out in the photos.

Painting Sage was actually out snapping some nice shots of his own miniatures and took her with him to get me a good photo – and I forgot to upload it to be available while blogging away at work – so I shall add that in the next post!!

Hahaha, I’m hoping she’s going to look a bit more…um…acceptable when she’s shown with her full fancy themed base. That or she’s forever going to be staring at me with her creeper eyes from the back of my shame shelf.

Talk soon!
~ The Ellinator.

Wet palette? Don’t mind if I do!

I am often hovering over the Painting Sage’s shoulders wondering how the colours are so even, and the layers so smooth and watching the magical and weird use of a ‘wet palette’.
I have often wondered if using one of these might help my ability to keep the paint a nice consistency.

So! The other day I head over with coffee to start painting a Warmahordes miniature and Painting Sage has made me a wet palette!

My amazing wet palette in all it’s glory!!

I do have to admit, it has made life SO much easier. I’m not having to water down my paint to the point that it’s non existent to keep it fluid, and really the main reason for using water now is just to keep my brush flexible haha.
Absolutely loving it!!

The colours you see there are the colours I am using to paint up Shadow of Everblight‘s Warcaster Lylyth.
This is not actually an army I’m planning to play, but I love the mini.

Slowly but surely. She now has a cloak and some teeth in her hair – but need to get a better photo of it.

Oh, and I had a stab at trying something freehand. As you know I was given some Warhammer 40K stuff from a friend as a gift, and I’m painting one of them to give back to him – so I asked what he would like on the flag and took a shot.

I need to go over the white again as it’s such a transparent colour (Game Colour Off White) it need a few layers to get it even.
Before anyone mentions this – I did not paint this over the black actually – but I did accidentally cut off his botton teeth when I was painting the back around it, so the teeth have ended up darker/less white coverage.
I’ma fix it later.

Well, that will be all for today!! Can’t wait to finish work and do some more paaaiinttting !!!

Sincerely,
El