Long Time, No Post!

Hello my lovely friends!

I realise that I have been extraordinarily absent for the last few weeks!

In a nut-shell, work roster changes and medical problems coming out of the wazoo changed my routines somewhat and haven’t had a lot of change for posting.

Onto Updates in the land of Gaming!! (But just to warn you, this is mostly PC gaming to follow!)

So I got accepted into the Hearthstone BETA and this game is RIGHT UP MY ALLY.
A deck building card came with fancy digital effects? YES THANKS, I’LL TAKE TWO.

I have actually entered an Australia store-chain run tournament for this, and am currently sitting 18th out of 60 players in the tourney. This is going to win me NOTHING, but it’s good fun none-the-less.

So far, my focus has been on Druid. But I’m starting to branch out a little to the other classes and am thoroughly enjoying Hunter.

Why don’t you love me anymore? You’re leaving me for HIM!? A HUNTER?
DOES HE EVEN LIFT?

In addition, I also got accepted into the Dawngate BETA.

Needless to say, it’s a lot like playing a less enjoyable version of LoL. Like, don’t get me wrong, I know it’s BETA and I know it’s a MOBA but – naaaah.

At least their character art is pretty?

OH! OH OH OH! I finally got around to playing a bit of the new Tomb Raider game! The reviews were absolutely correct.
I must say, best handling Tomb Raider I’ve ever played (and I’ve loved nearly all of them).
The UI is smart, the controls are organic, the cut scenes are amazing and the game play is involving and challenging without bordering on “Repeat this as many times are required to luck out actually getting it” as the Tomb Raider games sometimes had a tendency to do.

Welcome to my home. Hope you enjoy the lovely decor.

I have to admit, thoroughly impressed with the graphics.
As much as I think Lara Croft’s “face” is not quite the Lara Croft I have come to know at love (and let’s face it, unless she looks like a young Angelinda Jolie, I’m probably not sold), the faces are damned impressive.

The above snip, is GAME PLAY. Like….WHAT? That’s awesome.

Welp, I might leave it there for the moment – and blog a little bit more later in today if I have a chance.

Love you all my friends!!

~ as always,
A Highly Caffeinated Ellie

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The Mass Effect of Pneumonia

Hello my lovelies!! *BEWARE OF MASS EFFECT 2 SPOILERS*

As you may have noticed, I dropped off the face off the planet for a week or so.

So, I was in a friends wedding (which was all hectic on it’s own preparing for) but, as luck would have it the next day I was sick. Since then, I have mostly been moping around in bed feeling sorry for myself with Pneumonia and the relative goodness of a chest infection. Uuuuurgh.

Literally, stuck in bed for a number of days with not too much energy. So, how did I keep myself amused? With the Halloween STEAM sale of course.

Ehem. Maybe I should not be left to my own devices sometimes.

As a side note, I have no idea what Painkiller is, nor do I remember selecting it – but hey, there is it.

So I started playing Mass Effect 2. This is a game my cousin has been insisting I try as it is (in her words) “omfgrjuih34r5jkfhri34 epicz”.

Hmmm…it’s not too bad.

It’s not a bad game, and it has a relatively interesting story. You start as this chick (I’m playing as Femshep) that she’s proverbially brought back from the dead to do the bidding of some group that no body apparently likes.

Fast-forward a bit and my mission is to recruit a bunch of people in to my ‘crew’.

This chick. HAH, she’s basically my own personal hooker with a gun.

Dudes name is Archangel. Why though is actually beyond me as once you see his face, it’s not heaven you assumed he dropped from.

And Jack. She’s all hardcore and dangerous and wearing like….ropes to cover her nips.
I suppose living a few months in a stasis tube doesn’t leave for a lot of time to go clothes shopping.

So I head off on these missions in this nightclub, and of course what is the first thing a player should do when presented with digital strippers? Spend all the gold on a lap dance.

If I’d seen this kids face first, I might have kept my money.

And Jacks all…

…You’re doing it wrong.

As much as I am enjoying this game, I must admit the cut-scenes are a bit excessive. Even for me. I feel more like I’m watching a movie that I occasionally participate in, than I am participating in a story with occasional movie.

Other than this, I have been working little bits on WHAT WAS my Rotten Harvest competition entry – but due to getting sick never got her completed in time.

Photos of her next!!

Look forward to catching up on everyones posts! 🙂

~ Sincerely, El

Gifts, Pizza and Painting

So, well – I am the type of girl that gets heavily into her hobbies. By that I mean, I constantly read about them, want to be actively doing them, spend wild amounts (at least to my bank balance) of money on them AND talk about them.

I have been yammering on a lot to a friend of mine about Malifaux, Puppet Wars, War Machine and everything else miniature related I have been learning.
ANYWAY, long story short, the other day he comes out with this big box and gifts me all of his miniatures stuff. Apparently he was into Warhammer 40K a while back but hasn’t had much to do with it for a while and wanted it to go to a home where the mini’s would be painted and cherished.

Omg omg omg, no idea how excited I was to go through everything and start plotting bases and paint schemes.

Sooo many things!! And most of them still on their sprues!! (Is that how you spell that?)

So, I pulled out this little guy holding a big flag and thought it would be nice to paint him up really nice, and put something on the flag and gift back to the friend that gave me the box. Just to see that I was putting love into their painting and appreciate the gift.

But the skull at the top of the flag had been eaten away/melted by something?
So, here is my first attempt at making an epoxy replacement.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA. That skull looks REDICULOUS. But alas, it was made with love…or…something. Maybe I can fix it with paint?

Well, this is his progress so far…

I also had a few in the box that my friend had painted himself.
The flags on this are just so nice, and you can see effort was put into this mini, so I don’t have it in me to strip him. My plan is to just clean up a few paint chips, and add him to my shelf.

*Disclaimer: Not painted by me.

In the box I found a few choice items I was really excited about…

Do you see? DO YOU SEE? PONIES.

There were a couple of horse and rider sets already painted in the box so I decided to fix and strip them first. As they were mostly a single thick coat of black it took forever scrubbing, and it ended up actually leaving tiny little ‘bubble’ type holes all through out the horses saddle.
So I green stuffed the saddle and top of tail and sanded it back, after having soaked and scrubbed with Simple Green.

Now, my first pony is up to the stage of priming and painting.

PONY. SO EXCITED TO PAINT THIS PONY. EHEHEHEHE.

Well, I can smell my pizza has now finished cooking – so I shall see you all soon. Post more miniatures everyone 😀 !

Love always,
Ellison

War Machine with my good friend Wang

My painting sage is a War Machine player and on a number of occasions has been busy working away on a warjack or two while I’m set up painting my Malifaux crew.
But the game honestly intrigued me, so I asked if they would teach me how to play.

Now, to be entirely honest – this is the first proper table top war game I have ever invested time into learning the correct rules for, so was very eager to head over and learn the ins and outs of robot men battling it out.

You want me to what? OH YEA RIGHT, PIECE OF CAKE!

So, what we have done is actually ‘made up’ a game play style. The story premise is that there is a piece of equipment Coleman Stryker (I call him Wang…I am unsure as to why I named him that) wants, and to win, one of the Cygnar team need to reach the part and role a 6 (with 2 dice), while my opponent surrounds me.

The reason this suits me a bit more is because I have a premise to theorize on, a story I can formulate in my head and my friend can build un-even pointed armies purely for the experience of showing me what all the different types of figures can do.

Actually LOVING doing this. Because when I’m playing, I can see it like a movie in my head, hear Wang making ‘Go get em!’ supportive yells as he skirts off around the edge with his IronClad.
I’ve so far being using Lancer and Charger to attempt to kite the enemy, but this is sometimes more effective than other times – depending on the abilities of my opponents.

Last piece of news, my friend offered to sell me the Cygnar guys (at a greatly discounted cost) as I was enjoying playing with them so much, they thought I might like to have them for my own.
Yipppeeee! Now I have ordered myself a Hayley to add to my little blue team.

Arrow to indicate most integral tool to any good gaming session. A medium cappuccino.

I want to have a go at building some terrain pieces like this as not only do they look like good fun, but so I can have my own to sometimes bring to games and help make the table look nice and pretty.

Well, that’s all my friends!

Love – Ellie

Dark skin is too hard to paint

While I have been painting my Malifaux crew, I’ve been painting them to match how they look in the images on the cards or art.
Now, Marcus (head of the crew) is quite dark skinned – which I have never attempted before but figured, oh you know if lighter toned skin wasn’t too bad this should be similar.

It was actually awful. I’m currently in two minds between stripping him and making him lighter skinned or leaving him as he is and not being entirely happy with him.

What do you mean I’m ugly? I have lovely white eyebrows.

I don’t know, maybe when his clothes are done I can touch it up/fix it some how. Uuuugh, this miniatures painting business is so stressful – WHO KNEW.

Oh! Good news however, I got these little cuties in the mail today!

They are so little you have no idea. Like, less than a CM for the Tiny Kittens and Jackalope is barely over a CM big. I’m worried I’m going to damage his little antlers trying to put them on! (Both of these, also by Wyrd for the Arcanists of Malifaux)

Aaaannnd, my very generous Painting Sage gave me 2 boxes of paints. Most of them are half used, but plenty enough for a newbie like me to keep me busy for a while to come.
So excited to have more than a few colours to try to practice painting at home!

Yayayayayay.

Well my lovelies,
time for sleep.

Sincerely,
El

Miniatures and puppets

Hello my friends!!

So, I received my parcel in the mail, filled with lovely miniatures things and cost more money than I really have to spend – but WHAAAAT ever.

1. Some new paints and a light grey ‘white’ wash
2. Puppet Wars Unstiched!!
3. Zombie Chihuahua
4. Wendigo
5. Rasputina (normal version)

Soooo many pieces! Aaaarg!

So, I’ve never bought a ‘kit’ like this before where you have more than 1 miniature in a set to put together like this. But according to my ‘Teaching me all things miniature’ sage, this is one of the nicest kits he’s seen and thinks it’s a great way to get me introduced to taking them all apart, cleaning and gluing together.

So far – so good. I have 12 out of 44 done.
….that seems far more painful when I say it out loud.

Well, I finally got some time to work on le tigre (as I have now named him). Now, I realise a lot of people actually main this model to look like a wolf instead, and I thought of doing that to keep things simple, but my friend assured me they could teach me to wet blend.

Oooh lookie lookie, I have a brand spanking new coat!

Wet blending was seriously the most stressful technique I have ever tried. Moving at that speed to try to get everything together while it’s still liquid on the figure was REDICULOUS.
I kept making ‘Eeep’, ‘Oh no!’ and ‘AAAAAAARG’ sounds across the table with a raised eyebrow staring back at me going ‘What ARE you doing???’. Ehem.

Stripes stripes stripes…wait, is this a prison jacket, yo? Oh no, it’s just me.

Then I did little stripes. Yeaaaaa…all those panicked sounds I was making during the wet blending were worse during this. So tiny.
Everything was finished off with a wash and that’s where I left it for the day!

I am really excited about how it’s coming along but I have to be completely honest, more than a few times it was handed to my friend to try to correct a stripe I’d just stuffed up or show me how to blend on a certain type of fur. Whenever I attempt things like this at home on my own, they never go well.

Only other news is that I’m now watching my way through Kyle XY. Anyone remember that show?

Aaah yes, your pithy maths problem is no challenge for me.

I do remember this show, although didn’t watch it when it was coming out on TV. But the show is only like 5 something years old, why does it look like it was shot in the early 90s?Well, love you all!
~ Sincerely, Ellie

Defiance of Thrones

I am finally getting around to watching the series ‘Defiance’.

The basic concept of this series is very much my style, and the idea of a series paired to the story of a current running MMO I found very appealing – I just hadn’t had the time to really watch it.

Three episodes in and my thoughts on it are only 1 repeating one:
This show is suffering from a SEVERE damned case of

‘We wish we were Game of Thrones’

2/10 for effort.

I spend money I don’t really have

I was wandering around on an Australian miniatures website store and saw that they had Wyrd’s Puppet Wars Unstitched game.

So, this game is basically 44 plastic miniatures in the box, many of which are cutified puppet versions of the Malifaux crew (which appeals to my girly ‘oh it’s too cute’ side quite well).

Yea…needless to say, I impulsively decided to nab it while it was on sale, and then talked myself into ‘well, you’re already paying for postage..’ and grabbed a couple of small other things with it.

Current me is angry at past me for making us flat broke with too many days before getting paid.
Future me is going to love me for all the gifts in the mail.

~ Love from, Current El.

Gordon Ramsay Won’t Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

No miniatures this post, as well, I’m a bit ashamed of my new ones so, I’ll keep practicing a bit before posting another. q-q

An odd title for this post? Yes.
But, I’m sitting here watching the US edition of Master Chef (with Gordon Ramsay as a judge) and playing Dead Island realising, that he would never survive the Zombie apocalypse. He’d be too busy running around after zombies judging how they were filleting people and telling them they’re doing it wrong.

I love Human Flesh Sashimi, and I feel you seasoned this just right.

Aaaaanny who.
So I’ve been playing Dead Island, as I got it during a Steam sale for a few dollars. I do have to admit, this game is nothing like I assumed it would be.
Is there like…no story?

Of course I’ll come with you, I need someone to run faster than when shit starts hitting proverbial fans.

It’s basically, talk to someone at base camp -> get quest to survive sneaking past/killing zombies to get something -> return.
I was expecting something a little more Meet character -> have objective involving that character being with you -> Objectives switch between story, stealth, fighting etc -> proceed along beach line … buuut apparently not.

So basically, I’ve just been roaming about exploring and snapping images.

WTF IS THAT? AND WHY IS IT MID AIR?

Buddy, if you wrote this in your own blood ‘we’ aren’t anything, ‘you’ are a lunatic.

Now, this next image, looks good. Like Bow-chika-wa-wow good, but then when I look at the girls individual parts (legs, hips etc) I can’t help but think that this is also wildly out of proportion…or is it my imagination after staring at it for some time?

Buy ‘Coke’. That is all.

I love touches like advertising, books on the floor with proper covers and extra little scenic bits really exciting in games. I love studying and reading everything.

Well, that is all my friends!

Love you all!
~ Ellie

20 Things you probably didn’t know about PS4

These are mostly just ‘little’ features and things that haven’t really been focused on with the whole E3 game trailers and Xbox One funeral – but I actually found it quite interesting.

Suspend mode? Now that’s something I can get excited about!!