Confrontation figures arrived

A big thanks to Brookhurst Hobbies for sending me that batch of Confrontation figures from their recent sale. Unfortunately I guess because they ran out, the starter set was not included so now I'll have to look for that. I think I'm missing one other figure that they ran out of stock on but I'm ok with that. I've got more than plenty to keep me busy.

I think my early favorite might be the Bogeyman character.

That or the Executioner. the pose is kind of cool like he's about to unleash a big can of whoopass

Either way I know have a LOT more minis to add to the workbench. Unfortunately I'll be away this upcoming long weekend so they'll have to wait.

New WM Mercenhary Nautical pics

I admittedly got this from Tabletop Gaming News who got it from somebody else. But some guy named Tony took some sweet pictures of the new mercenary nautical themed warjack at the PAX show last weekend. My friend JayJian was there, he said the new stuff looks phenomenal.

This is just not good news.

Here's the newest unknown heavy


I like it a lot. Pretty clean colors too. Hmm painting this group could be relatively easy.

Here's a few more of these naval Mercs from the WM site itself.

This one isn't bad either though I'm not sure what the other arm is supposed to be, a mechanical tentacle maybe?

The Sea Dogs look relatively cool but there are a few solos for this set that just look so much more interesting.

This is lord Joln, a bit of a Napoleon ripoff but he looks pretty mean.

Ok what can I say, I'm a sucker for monkeys, especially the cymbal banging kind that creep you out.

And finally, the human type character I like best from this set, Doc Killingsworth. I don't know why but this strikes me as a cross between pirate and a bushmen type. He's got the giant hatchet in one hand and XXX strength moonshine in teh other.

Oh how I would love to attemptto foul up the paint job on this guy. If I ever got any of them, this might have to be the first. He just looks way too cool. Plus, for those on a budget (like myself) he's only $6.37 at Superhero Gameland.

CoolMiniOrNot.com

So the latest website obsession has been this CoolMiniOrNot.com site for me. It motivates me to paint some more, give some finishing touches to what I already have painted and photograph them for submission to the site. I honestly think my BEST paint job so far might get me a rating of 5 on the site. My worst, hopefully in the 3's. They seem pretty tough.

I asked for one of those clamp lights with a magnifier for my birthday to help me attempt at being a half decent painter. I still hate painting the faces. I'm just lousy at it. But once I get a few that are submission ready. I'll include the photo here when I submit.

I've also noticed with the unboxing post earlier that I'm going to need to do something about the light in the den or go outside to photograph. With digital cameras, the darn things saturate the mini with too much light on automatic settings and seem to have trouble focusing in macro mode. I did a little googling and got some ideas. The weirdest one I'll have to try is putting a tiny bit of dish soap in the paint to evenly thing it out without making it a wash effect.

We'll see what happens.

I cleaned up the den... now I'm in trouble

So I spent the better part of Sunday cleaning up the den down in Man Island. While this was great for progress in getting rid of the boxes that had yet to be unpacked, I found out that I have a few things to paint. In fact, I have MANY things to paint.

Here's the list and it isn't pretty:

Warmachine Mercenary Starter Box. I'd say I'm 20-30% through. I have the bigger warjack painted but I've had to re-glue arms to both light warjacks plus I used yellow on the heavy and I'm not sure if I like it. I may have to try and strip him and repaint but I'm not sure how easy that process is.

Warmachine Mercenary Steelhead Halberdiers. Wow, my least favorite of the projects left unfinished. These little guys are an absolute bitch to glue together. I'm not even close to painting them yet since assembly isn't finished and well I haven't found my primer yet. When these are done, I'll be pretty happy because I can use them with any faction just about.

Urban Mammoth Urban War starter box. You've seen the unboxing... and that's about as far as I've gotten. Everything is primed but I still have to glue the backpacks to the troops which I might do after I paint.

eM-4 Oriental Blades set. Only 4 little men and no gluing and they look really cool but ask me if I've even primed them yet. Not at all. The cool factor on these guys may propel them up the priority list even though I can't use them in any established game I own. I might go warhammer historical with these guys though.

Plus the *few* items I may have ordered last week during that ridiculous confrontation scale.

The good news about the cleanup is that I was able to move this mammoth bookshelf into the den that holds literally everything I have in relation to the miniatures. I've actually got it organized and it motivates me to paint more. Well that and a website I'll talk about in a minute.

If I had to rank the priority of what I have right now it would be

1. WM Mercenary starter box
2. Urban Mammoth starter box
3. the wicked Samurai dudes
4. WM soul sucking Steelhead Halberdiers

Let's see what progress I can make on these things in the next month. I'm not claiming I'll paint everything up. I'd just like to clear something off the list so I can start playing with it this fall.

Non miniatures note

So Natty Boh let me borrow Bioshock last night for the 360. The game is not only visually stunning but fantastic to play. You can achieve objectives different ways and the zombie-like characters you face just come out from everywhere. Any game where you can alter you DNA through injections to give you god like powers is cool with me (I wonder if they got their inspiration from Barry Bonds?).

I was planning on doing some painting early Saturday morning while the wife slept but I think I might have to scrap those plans and see how far I can get.

Damn you Natty Boh!

Big Sale on Rackham Confrontation

Brookhurst Hobbies is having a huge sale on their Rackham Confrontation stuff. I do enjoy a good deal. 75% off many figures. I wasn't a huge fan of the series before but upon looking through the various factions (and there are many) and seeing that you only need three or four minis to play... well let's just say this has potential. I do know Rackham is going to reproduce these figures in pre painted plastic but I heavily doubt they'll be as detailed or as cheap as the sale going on now. Thanks to TGN for putting the word out.

Game Table idea #2

So while looking around on line, I noticed these new Zuzzy Terra Mats. I'm seriously debating plunking the money down on this to easily complete one side of the game table. The question is which one should I get?

They have the Sulfur Fields or the Scourged Forest.

Both look like winners. Since it would be used for Warmachine mostly... I'm leaning slightly to the Scourged forest. These mats look pretty cool. I guess you can become Bob Ross and drybrush to your little hearts content.

Hmm for my 4 x 4 surface, $39 might not be terrible.

Game table

At some point in the near future, I actually plan on completing my game table. I have a bunch of home made buildings for it, just not the table itself. I've got the 2' x 2' boards cut, I had a first attempt at it with 6 inch felt strips but that ended badly. Now I'm thinking about getting a couple of yards of fabric. One side I'll do green and the other I'll do gray or black and draw some streets in.

Right now the closest I get to a game table is a frame I picked up at target that holds all of my star wars and heroclix maps. I think either Natty Boh or GT Jason gave me the idea for that one and it was brilliant. The frame was on sale for about $12 and totally worth every penny.

Also if anyone who is actually reading this is interested. I'm debating getting either some Reaper C.A.V. minis or SuperFigs minis for a little change of pace this fall. Both only seem to require a few minis to play. The other option is whenever Wyrd releases their dice-less game to get started with that. They have fantastic minis.

Unboxed #1 Urban War

So here it is, the first unboxing. Please bear with my crappy camera technique as I try to master proper lighting and just about everything else that goes along with it.

This is the unboxing of the Urban War starter box. Yes, I realize it's not the newest game put out by Urban Mammoth but a complete starter set for slightly over $20 is too damn good to pass up.

First comes first. Here's the box as it comes.

Kind of cool. I like the idea of sci-fi skirmish games. Let's see what we have when we open the box.

Ok two sets of figures some equipment on sprues, bases and as a nice touch, I believe it comes with some customizable building type structures.

This is where the apologies begin. The first unboxing with pictures is going to be a little rough. These are the VASA figures and what look to be attachable communications devices. Pretty cool. Sort of like futuristic infantry but with gas masks. I guess the future is as polluted as they say it's going to be.

Here's a picture of one of the soldiers. Looks pretty detailed. At what comes out to about $1.65, this is an outstanding figure. It's hard to make out the weird gas mask they wear in this pic.

So here's the Syntha set. As the name suggests these are cyborg types I believe. Looks like they might have one slightly larger figure.

Here's a Syntha solo. Um, nice breast....plate. Yeah I may need to be alone for a minute. Ok take me to your leader Syntha chick. And I just gave the overall detail nod to the Syntha. Yes, I am THAT easy.

Here are the buildings still in their sprues. This deal is getting better and better. I could definitely use these for more than just this game. Some nice sci-fi terrain pieces that are reconfigurable are always welcome.

Now to the boring parts. Two dice and the bases for the figs. Just an aside, I haven't gotten advanced enough with these things yet to do anything fancy like glue minuscule dirt to my bases in any of the stuff I own. If it gets primered white then yes, I meant to do that for effect. Otherwise let's glue them, paint them and get them in play I say.

Finally we have the magazine/manual. It is interesting to note there's an offer for a free triad figure on the inside. I wonder if it's still valid. Anyway I gave it a glance, nice animations, the rules seem relatively easy to comprehend.

Well, thanks for putting up with my first unboxing. Hopefully this one moves quickly through the workbench and then onto same dedicated game testing. I'll let you see the progress as it happens. Lucky you!

Why on line stores rule and B&M need to figure out a way to compete

First let me say that I'm not completely against buying stuff from my local hobby shop. The people that run the place always seem nice and mostly helpful. But dear lord does it seem like a price gouge walking into the place. Here's an example. I started collecting a Khador army for Warmachine. So I went to the local spot to see what a Berserker heavy warjack would cost (btw Khador is the best because of all of the heavies in their army).

So I walked into the place, talked to the owners for a few minutes and took a look. They wanted $27 for the Berserker. This is where the fun started. The suggested retail price on the manufacturer's own website (Privateer Press) is $24.99. So right there they're charging an extra $2. I did not buy there. Instead, I went home and went on line. In 30 seconds of googling I was able to find the same thing for $15.83 at CCG Armory. Even with shipping, I'm still about $7 ahead of the game. So is the loss of instant gratification by buying in store worth the $7.

You're damn right it was.

But back to the point, I still buy my paint and the occasional mini from the local place. But they're just priced to high on the minis themselves most of the time. I know they have more overhead than the on line places but hopefully a good shop combats some of this by having dedicated game nights where they have sealed box games or just leagues where you pay a small fee to play, and the top few get door prizes every week. I know the local store guys are typically getting a break already from the distributor so I'd at least like them to be priced at what the manufacturer believes is fair.

Until I start feeling a little less gouged when I walk into a shop, I'm sticking with on line stores. Typically I'm ordering multiple items so the shipping cost is spread out. Plus, I am cheap.

First unboxing and review

I just moved recently but I do plan to do an unboxing and review of the Urban War starter box sometime soon. I'm not talking about going all the way to full painting. That's more for the work bench but I've had this thing sitting in a moving box for a few months now and I can finally go ahead and unwrap and make some progress on it. Updates will come. Look hopefully under the Unboxed tab when it's up on the right side.

Big Bang

Welcome to Metal Mini Madness!
This is obviously my first post on the blog. So, what can you find here you ask? Well, essentially I'm going to unbox, review, rant and essentially comment on the products of the tabletop universe.

Mostly this will consist of the sci-fi genre of metal miniatures but that can and will change seeing as I have plenty of plastic CMG stuff as well and I see some new stuff I like out there.

Besides putting up with my rants I hope to link to whatever great deals I find out there so that some of this is useful to someone other than me and not just one giant ego stroke (assuming I have more than one visitor who's not related to me look at the site).

So welcome to Metal Mini Madness where I hope to have enough of a periodic update that people find value in this blog.

-Lefty