We've got a European Ticket to Ride

Father Christmas was very keen to reward my first born son with a board game and he wisely chose Ticket to Ride: Europe. We had opportunity to give it a go as a family, on first glance the rules seemed quite complicated and decided my wife and youngest would team up, which in hindsight was a mistake as the rules are actually quite simple. In truth I think it's potentially the easiest game we've got - compared to Pandemic and Catan. It's really easy to setup and essentially amounts to a card game with some board mechanics with a train theme. This was me [yellow] trailing early on to the wife [black] and the boy [green].

Of course things change by the end of the game and thanks to comnpleting all my tickets, creating the longest train and not using any stations I steamed ahead by the end. There was actually a few more points to add taking me well over 100 points

We had another game a few nigths later and the boy managed to whoop all of our collective cabooses making nearly 120-130points! I highly recommend it and if you need anymore convincing why not check out the awesome Wil Wheaton in his Tabletop episodes of the original and Europe version, it's why I advised good old St. Nick that it was a gift worth receiving.

A new 'Wayne' enterprise!

Christmas came and went and I took a little break over that period so some of these will be catch-up posts. One of these isn't actually my post, as such, this is about my eldest son. Having visited the new hobby shop Wargames in Southport he'd been really excited [well I assume so, it's difficult to tell with a 13 year old] about the Batman Miniatures game. He pretty much earmarked his Christmas money in advance. So as soon as the festive holidays were over we went into Southport so he could sweatily part with his cash. He came away with the core rule book, which is really nice drawing on much of the exisiting comic book art, the Scarecrow and Militia crew starter box, Hush, the Arkham Knight and his favorite 'super hero' - Deathstroke [in the next picture].

To help support his new venture I got the Joker box, I liked the idea od painting the prison fatigues and these guys all seemed a little odd which was, although I rather dislike the super tall stupid hat guy in the back left. I must admit that putting them together was a reminder of just how much I came to loathe metal miniatures and love plastic ones. Even just cover up the slot on the base was a chore with an evenings worth of Milliput effort :( That said I am communicating extensively with my son about where my involvement begins and ends. He is definitely painting his miniatures I'm presuming I will be doing mine. He's certainly more amenable to the process now which is refreshing. Next step is to create some terrain and a skirmish mat to use. My Print & Play buildings will suffice for structures and I've created a quick and dirty mat already which if I can get Illustrator to render the effects correctly might look OK but RAM is in short supply thanks to stupid Windows 7 32bit that we're saddled with.

While I was at Wargame I bumped into Chris from Lost Boys [now the Merseyside Mammoths] not sure I've seen him since we had our battle [although he may have been at GW for last years Armies on Parade]. He's now jumped to Batman and had some interesting advice about expanding our force. I also picked up a 100mm thick pick and pluck Battlfoam for my Cerastus. Although I still need another to fully enclose the Knight and it's actually bigger than my GW or my Tabletop Tyrant Squire case it does fit perfectly inside the Powerplay Pro Metal Carry Case I got from Home Bargain. I mean the dimensions are 100% correct so if you picked one up then Battlefoam is definitely something to look at. As you can see I also took another couple of pictures of the store so you can get a sense of scale, it really is cool amd the wife was perfectly happy there, although she advises some non-hobby magazines might be nice for hobby widows ;)

The display cabinets are also rocking some seriously cool models too.

And at the risk of going overboard here's their own 'tour of the store'. Chris had mentioned to them my previous post, which they'd been grateful for but when someone starts a small business, whatever it may be they deserve as much help and support as they can get. High street retail is hugely difficult and especially something as niche as wargames and hobby supplies so fingers crossed Wargames will be here to stay.

Poll test

In preparation for the 40kaddict terrain competition here's a little poll test based on my existing Print & Play templates. Should anyone wish to attempt try multiple votes please let me know in the comments so I can check and see how the security works. Although I suppose you could still 'employ' a load of facebook friends to spoof votes it'll be interesting to see what mechanisms the poll has to prevent this, so please click away below:

Which is the best Print & Play STC Template skin?

1 2

3 4

Poll Maker

40kaddict Terrain Competition Update

As December comes to a close I get to check how the competition fund is growing and a further £10 has been added in just one month! So I'd definitely advise looking at any plans you may have to enter the competition sooner rather than later as the fund is nearly half way to maturity!

Not sure what else to say about this, the metrics look very interesting again with some clicks worth 90p alone but a few adverts worth 60p got a number of clicks so that racked up about £3 in just one day! It really is quite staggering, despite these being only a few pence here and there it all seems to add up. Not only that but I'm somehow just earning a penny or two without any click-thru, don't know how that works but it's interesting to see it's possible.

Over the last 30 days clicks have come from:

1. UK - 17
2. USA - 3
3. Austria - 2 [but only 81 page views]
4. Australia - 2

So thanks for your support of the prize fund, although Canada generated 19p without a single click! Germany brought in 3p and Sweden, Spain, New Zealand and France all contributed a penny each. Sadly no sign of Syria this time around but I did get the odd visit from Laos, Monaco, Gibraltar, India, Oman, Iceland and Kazakhstan. I love to see this sort of thing, welcome one and all. Anyway, we'll reconvene at the end of January to see where the totaliser is at, thanks again.

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah new FREE Print & Play building template

I know Christmas and New Year has been and gone but there are still presents to be had and the 40kaddict thinks you've all been very good this year so please accept this gift as 2016 begins...

In truth the bulk of this design was created over 2 years ago. When I first started designing Print & Play terrain I developed all four texture maps one after another, basically just jamming with the layout and seeing what ways I could make it different. The inspiration falls squarely on this old 1st Edition Epic Space Marine building, I think it's the Generatorium but there's so little info from these days [although i do have the rulebook at home somewhere, wait... yep just found a .pdf on my hard disc and it is indeed a Generatorium, which as we all know is:

A city or industrial complex requires vast quantities of energy, and power supplies are a favourite target for attacking forces. The nature of a generator will vary from world to world. Fertile planets often use organic or fossil fuels, while fusion grids and plasma reactors are common on industrialised worlds. Solar generators and geothermal energy are also used where local conditions permit. These power sources, and the secrets of their operation, are jealously guarded by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Of course my misremembered stab at it no way matches the majesty of the original but the concrete texture came out really well. Now you can obviously just print these out, stick them to foamboard [printing on sticky labels will further facilitate this] and build but I would heartily recommend an alternative. Should you have access to the printer and materials then print one set onto clear acetate and then print another set onto paper/labels. Now you may have to print another set and apply to the foamboard as well. Then cut the windows out on the foamboard, apply the acetate sheet for transparent windows. Then apply the label set to some cereal box or mounting card, cut out the windows again and glue over the top for a composite detailed building.

Now that may be a little more effort than Print & Play but it's next level detail and only a little effort for a lot more gain. Over the next few days I may consider putting this one together myself as it looks like I'll need some city blocks for a new interesting hobby adventure, more to follow.

Oh, and just a reminder that the Google AdSense competition will include the Print & Play terrain. If you can get a decent photograph or photo-manipulated shot of one of these, maybe with practical smoke effects even you could still be in with a chance to win an Imperial Knight [or equivalent] as and when the AdSense funds mature [update to follow].

To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 4MB in size [I make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg or spend hours trying to reduce the file size, I tweaked it a little bit and got it down so hopefully it's less of an issue now.]:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbWTlldVNha1c1cHM

Meanwhile all the other Print & Play and standard terrain templates are available here:
http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/terrain-is-everything-hail-omnissiah.html    

P.S. let me know if there are any problems with the download, it's a bit difficult for me to check

Dark Angels - Jefighter!

It doesn't look like I ever rewarded this model with a post of it's own, it just got lumped in with other projects I was working on simultaneously. Well with the Knight at a 'save point' it was time to overcome the inertia on this project. Stumbling blocks were fundamentally magnets. It's always problematic but so worth it. There are tutorial online of course to help [often I still find it hard], the one I first printed out was from the eternal wargamer but Michael Corr has an equally detailed one over at St Andrews Wargaming and obviously I put my own spin on in it. Really my method was just fill it with Milliput and drill out holes at me leisure. I did the underwing mounts and the nose cannon that way. Putting the milliput into whatever holes, then gluing the wepon mounts in place, which squashed the putty. Then using the weapons, pre-dipped in water and squashing them gently - providing a perfect surface to drill into for my magnets when the Milliput cures. I'm still not sure about the targeter/heavy bolter mounts either side of the nose. Mike said they're too hard to swap so it's a blocker to overcome.

The top of the jetfighter, I just glued in some sprue and attached a magnet.

I then filled the two tops with Milliput and pressed it into place until I got an impression of the magnet. This means I can easily align it perfectly to fit the one in the fuselage.

I also prepared the Rift Cannon extension that will allow the magnet to butt up against the Milliput in the nose.

So magnets go in next and I just have to decide what to do about the targeter/heavy bolter mounts either side of the nose and whether to magnetise the hover jets/ammo covers. When I first got this I never expected to make the Dark Talon, the Jetfigther was a better prospect but magnetising for variety is so worthwhile. Now the Dark Talon is considerably better  but I'm not 100% wedded to representing all things through magnets I just need to decide which options I can live with glued in place, what would you do?

HAPPY X-MAS

Merry X-Mas from Professor Egon Seuss and the rest of the Magos on Ferron Proxima. Additional felicitations from the guys and gals at the Vulcan Institute of Techno-Archaeology. May all your X-mas wishes be plastic [or resin, but not Finecast].

In case you're not X-mas orientated please accept the following good wishes:

I will be posting up a holiday gift lift later in the week, y'know when people have time to look at the blog instead of being sat stuffed on turkey, sprouts, Christmas pudding and Quality Street so see you all then, then!