Car Wars Variant [draft]

Ideas and pics of my CW mod:

Hotwheels Scale (CW car-truck bases.cdr)
New Turn Key ("turn key.cdr" and "turn key v2.cdr")
Modular Arena (cw arena 3.jpg)
New Body rules: Size & Style (Car Wars Variant Rules v2.1.doc)
New style record sheet (CW Data Card.cdr)

Pit Omega

Pit was one of my favorite games as a boy. I don't remember why or when I got rid of the game, but it was at least 20 years ago.

I recently found a copy of the 70's edition of Pit (the same version I had) at a local thrift shop for a $1. I immediately bought it and played it a few times with the family. I broke it out at the last board game night with my friends. So far, I have only played 3-player games. I really enjoy the frenetic pace of the game, but with only a few players, it is easy to track what is going on.

With more players, I imagine that it would be harder to track cards, especially the Special cards. But I still want to up the play-ability within my gaming group--alcohol is likely an increase in fun too!

Pit Omega card back

That got me thinking. I am putting my Omega treatment to Pit, focusing on two aspects: 1) Allowing more players, and 2) Adding more special cards. I researched the interwebs and found that Pit was released in 1904. It is almost an exact copy of a game that came out the year before--Gavitt’s Stock Exchange. In that game there are no Bull or Bear card, but there is a Telegram special card.

In addition to the different special cards(s), there are also a couple mechanical differences between GSE and Pit:

• Must trade one or two cards only (in Pit: up to four)
• Winner gets 2x points printed on their commodity (in Pit: 1x)
• Anyone that has 6 or more of their commodity when the winner is rings the bell gets the points printed on their commodity (in Pit: no equivalent rule)

So I set forth to create a new set of rules and to design a new set of cards. The commodities in the 70s edition are all grains, so the three new commodities I added are also in the grain family. The complete set of Commodities in Pit Omega are:

• Wheat - 100 points
• Barley - 85 points
• Corn - 75 points
• Rye - 70 points
• Poppy - 65 points
• Oats - 60 points
• Millet - 55 points
• Hay - 50 points
• Rice - 45 points
• Flax - 40 points

I decided to include all three special cards from both Pit and GSE (Bull, Bear, and Telegram) and I came up with an additional 2 (Hybrid and Surplus).

• Bull: A Wild Card if you are winner, but worth -20 points if you are not the winner. Score triple points if you win with a set of ten commodities plus any Bull cards(ie a set of eight plus two Bulls)
• Bear: Worth -20 points. Can not win with it in your hand.
• Telegram: Worth +30 points if you didn't win, worth -30 points if you did. Two telegrams in the same hand cancel each other out.
• Hybrid: Worth -40 points. May win with a set of six commodities (instead of nine). Score points based on the majority commodity.
• Surplus: Worth -30 points. May win with this card in hand.

For the design of Pit Omega, I wanted to pay homage to my version (the 70's edition) as well as earlier sets. I took inspiration from the colors from the 70s edition (orange and ocher/green) and the art within a circle from earlier editions. This is what I came up with for the front:

Sample card from Pit Omega

In full disclosure, I used clip art for the grain artwork and the pattern on the back of the card.

Pit is an excellent party game! If you are interested, pick up a copy of the game and download my variant of the rules below.

A PDF of the Rules can be found here. 

The rules presented in this post are home brew variant rules for Pit. No copyright intended.

Ultimate Monopoly

I came across this fan-made variant for Monopoly the other day while researching my own fan-made variant of Monopoly!

Much like my Risk Omega Project, I have been working on a Monopoly Omega project. My aim is to combine Mega Monopoly, Monopoly City, Super Add-on, Monopoly Stock Exchange, and a few ideas of my own. While I was compiling data, I came across this board.

Jonizaak from Deviant Art created this Ultimate Monopoly board as well as rules to go with it. Another artist created a set of cards. To my amazement, this project is about 85% of what I was in the process of developing!

The main element I would like to add is Monopoly City Bonus Buildings, Hazards, Industrial Buildings, Stadiums and Railroads.

That's all for now!

Token Risk

Part 7 in my Risk Omega project... Click here for past posts on this project.

I started designing, printing and assembling tokens needed for the additional rules I am writing. As I have said before, in game design/mod I often design the end product before the rules are even made. This is one of those cases. I have ideas for mechanics, but have not yet finalized them, but here we are looking at completed tokens.

When I say design, I mean that loosely. Basically I took images off the interwebs, cut them out, flopped them, added a white outline and placed them on a star shape and a circle with a gradient color fill.

I bought these laser-cut MDF bases from GF9 awhile back specifically to make tokens. Although I hadn't thought of this project yet.

Pairing up the fronts and backs. In most cases they are identical. one-sided tokens is one of my pet peeves in board games!!! I printed the tokens on label stock and simply peel and stick.

This is the underside to my circle punch. It makes a 1" hole. I hold the punch upside down so I can see the image and center it before cutting it out. You can see a set of completed red player tokens on the upper right.

My first page of tokens. The top "heads" are the leaders/generals. There is one 3-star, two 2-star and three 1-star leaders for each color. The 1-stars will be on the back and the 2 and 3-star leaders will be on the front.

The next images represent a Palmerston Fort style defense. They were built around the time of Napoleon III by Britain, but other countries built similar forts.

The next image represents a spy. These will be available only after achieving an objective. I originally planned on using a grey background, but later decided on making one for each color.

The ship is an example of a token with out a rule. I have 3 different rule mechanics in mind so will be play-testing the best option. Again, I originally printed the ships with a grey background.

Next is a desert. I have an idea to have weather and geographical elements to the game. At the moment, my thought is when the event is "triggered" the appropriate token is placed in the effected territory.

Lastly, are the red stars, or victory points. This will be the way to win the game.

This is my second sheet of tokens. The blue background wound up printing too dark and too similar to black, so I remade them lighter. Then I printed more forts, spys, and ships in player colors, as well as more stars.

Risky Business (part 6)

Here is a quick last minute post...

Many of you have asked for the files I created in my Risk project. I have poorly responded to you requests and I apologize. My attempts to provide links have been haphazard; Party because of misplaced files on a secondary HD, and partly because the project was off my radar.

The fonts used in the InDesign file are: Aquiline Two, Romantiques, UglyQua, and Wingdings. The first three fonts were downloaded for free at Fonts2u.com.

Hopefully the links that follow will be complete and actually work!! Both files are Zip'd (ZIPX) containing the original files.

PSD map file with all layers
InDesign file with images and fonts

I have been working a little bit on the rules recently. Last week, my wife and son and I played a standard game of Risk (2008 rules). Hopefully, I will soon be printing a copy of my map so I can start play testing it!

Risk: The Table (Part 5)

The map burned into a coffee table!

A reader of this site, Cass Jones, etched a version of my Risk map onto a coffee table!! WOW! How great it looks! I am amazed and privileged to have had a hand at such a glorious creation.

Game in progress

If you are interested in reading more about my project, below are links to the previous posts.

Risk: An Unexpected Journey (part 4)

Fine tuning a Risky Venture

Two Risk or Not Two Risk

Risk Reward

Poll Results: Classic Game Boxes

I posted a poll back in December asking you if it was worth selling my old game boxes. Well, 85% of you thought it was worth it.

So, they will be added to the growing pile of items to be sold on eBay. If any of you are interested, I will entertain any reasonable offers!

Thanks for your feedback!

A new Contributor!

I would like to welcome a new contributor to the blog... (drum roll please)... Lord Grimskull!... (cymbal crash)

Lord Grimskull is a member of our Dark Heresy and Deathwatch campaigns, where he plays a feral scum (pic above) and a Salamander apothecary. He also is part of our board game group, the GM of another group, an artist (he drew the line art for my band's poster), and will be running a play test group of D&D 5e.

He recently did his own green stuff work on the next version of his Dark Heresy character. It is an amazing job--Especially as a first attempt. I will be painting the model and will post a showcase when I am finished.

I can't wait to try out D&D 5e! We have made our characters (most of us) and will run a sample combat before actually putting boots on the [campaign] ground.

That's all I have to say... I will let Lord Grimskull take it from here. I look forward to reading his musings!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We made it through the holiday in spite of a severe respiratory virus, second degree acid burn, and a minor financial shortfall--Fortunately we buy gifts for our son throughout the year, so Santa's reputation is still in good form!

Everything is slowly getting better in time for the new year. I wish you all a very Happy New Year and an amazing 2013!

There is a little game related material to share as well. Our game master, Adeptus-B has been busy the last few weeks. He created a water board and some stone "islands" for our next Dark Heresy mission.

Risk: An Unexpected Journey (part 4)

I recently started working again on my custom Risk board (and rules). You can see my progress that I started over a year ago here (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).

The most notable change is the addition of 19 territories (up from 51). But another change is that I redrew the entire map! The continental proportions are loosely based off the Risk 2008 board, but I used various global maps for the actual drawing. Other changes are adding more regions, more "ancient map" detail, and rules/component insets.

Inspiration for this project came from the desire for a lite world domination game that can be played within 2 hours or less that has good replay value (my two biggest issues with standard Risk). I love the Napoleonic pieces that came in the 1993 edition, so that is where I started with the style of map art.

I enjoyed designing the map much more then putting all the rules together. In fact, some of my rules ideas have derived directly from the map design process! With that said, I have done very little with the rules, apart from taking notes--Nothing playable. Oh well, I am still having fun with this creative process!!

[EDIT] If you would like the hi-res files, they can be download here:

InDesign File
InDesign Support Files (Including a PSD of MAP)
PDF

POLL: Classic Game Boxes

I have a stack of empty game boxes. Many of them are vintage, and most are from expansions or miniatures.

My question is, are they worth selling? I no longer want to keep them, but hesitate to recycle them.

I usually don't keep these boxes--Once I build a model, or cram the expansion into the main game, I toss 'em.

But for various reasons, these boxes have hidden well enough to evade their destined demise.

 I have a feeling the vintage GW boxes could get some attention, but the rest are not worth it.

Please post your opinion below, or click on the poll at the top right of the site.

Hello

Image used without permission

Hey guys! I have not had much to say over here for quite some time (7 months!!), but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy... I joined a band--Kilty by Association! We are a celtic/folk/punk band and have had a gig almost every month since June. If you are interested in checking us out, here is our FB page. We are in the middle of uploading a bunch of songs from our latest gig, and we should be finished with a 3-song CD by Christmas.

I also recently finished this year's home brews.

This was one of my most popular past brews,
so I made another batch!

This was another of my most popular past brews,
so I made another batch of this too!

 There are 4 stand-outs this year... Kona Storm (a coffee porter), Witch Hazel (a chocolate hazelnut nut-brown)--also a remake, KbA Ale (a 9.3% scotch ale)--named after the band, and a surprise hit, PBJ (a peanut butter and blackberry jelly wheat). The other two are quite good too... Quaker Beer (a maple brown sugar oatmeal stout)--named after the famous brand of oatmeal, and Autumn's Secret (a macadamia pumpkin ale). I always make labels for my beer (and soda). Click here for the album of all my creations.

Now that the cool days are here, and I am caught up with the band's current catalog, I will be posting the few projects I did manage to complete over summer and will start up some new (and old) ones!

Before I go, I do want to give a shout out to a cool Kickstarter project that I can't wait to get my hands on. It is called Boss Monster. The game is inspired by classic video games, and challenges you to become a villain, build a dungeon, lure adventurers, and destroy them! Check it out here.

The Vermilion Codex

Hey- Adeptus-B here. Zorcon has been making references to our Dark Heresy campaign in this blog for some time now. The following is a journal of the campaign- it was originally posted on the FFG Forums, but I've always wanted to go back and include some pictures, so I'm re-posing the 'fancy' version here. 'The Vermilion Codex' is the name of a volume of forbidden lore that lies at the heart of many of the Acolytes adventures. This introductory scenario, which sets down the premise, is titled:

DH assumes that the player characters start out as currently employed agents of an Inquisitor. However, as a fan of 'caper' movies, I've always liked the part where the team of specialists is initially recruited, so I thought it would be fun to try something similar in DH- starting the campaign with the player character's first meeting with their prospective patron. This was fairly risky- there was always a possibility that the recruitment mission would be a failure, or the PCs simply wouldn't come together at the right time to form a party. I tried to allow for enough failsafes to channel things in the right direction if the scenario went off the rails, but you can't allow for every possibility. Still, being a glutton for punishment, I blundered forward...

I didn't assign dates to the events depicted here until after the party had officially formed; I had to keep the timing flexible to ensure that everyone ended up at the right place at the right time...

The PCs names are bolded the first time they appear. Text in [brackets] contain information relevant to the storyline that was unknown to the PCs at the time.

The would-be Inquisitorial Acolytes

301.815.M41. The Inquisitorial Black Ship Nicodemus arrives in orbit of the grimy hive-dominated industrial planet of Fenksworld, to take custody of their current batch of identified psykers, in accordance with Imperial law. The capital hive-city of Nova Castillian is abuzz about the ominous visitor which has arrived nearly a month ahead of schedule.

302.815.M41. [Inquisitor Aurellius Montag of the Ordo Hereticus, travelling on board the Nicodemus fulfilling some bureaucratic obligations to his Ordo, has dinner with his old friend Provost Severis, head of the Nova Castillian Arbites precinct. After dinner, Severus asks Montag for his opinions about a possible Conspiracy that his Arbites have uncovered...]

303.815.M41. Venris, a young noble-born cleric in the service of Nova Castillian's Crown District Cathedral, encounters his down-and-out cousin Pietro after his daily services. When Venris inquires about his disheveled appearance, Peitro tells him that he has fallen in with a very dangerous crowd and become addicted to the drug Obscura. His new 'friends' were using him to make contacts with members of Fenksworld's upper class society, but his drug addiction got out of hand and, now that he is of no more use to them, Pietro is convinced that they will try to 'eliminate' him. Venris agrees to help his cousin and takes him in.

Kaarl, a disciple of the Machine God, begins a gruelling 72-hour workshift deep in the Bowels, the lowest functioning district of Nova Castillian, bordering the abandoned Underhive.


304.815.M41. [While Venris is away at services, Pietro breaks under his withdrawal symptoms and disappears.]

In the Adminisratum Annex of Nova Castillion, an adept named Denathor, newly promoted to Munitorium Quastor, spots a discrepancy on a weapon shipment invoice; being naturally paranoid, he investigates, dragging the signatory of the invoice, Sub-Quastor Akton, to the hanger where the shipment is staged. Denathor checks several of the cases of lasguns, and finds nothing amis. When he begins to pry the lid off of the case with the anomalous tracking number, however, he discovers that the case is filled with scrap metal. In a panic, Akton draws a concealed laspistol. This leads to a near-fatal shoot-out, in which Akton reveals that he is stealing lasguns on behalf of parties unknown; Denathor barely survives, while Akton is killed by a mysterious cloaked figure who promptly disappears- apparently after checking the contents of the case himself.


Arbites Trooper Alaric, on patrol in the Administratum Annex, receives a call about a disturbance at a Munitoruim shipping hanger. Upon arriving at the scene of the firefight, he arrests Denathor; he finds no sign of a 'cloaked figure'. Alaric takes Denathor to his Pricinct and, after Denathor recieves some medical attention, he is brought to an interrogation room. While interrogating Denathor, Alaric's investigation is abruptly taken over by Captain Clovix, an Arbites officer who would normally have no jurisdiction over this particular crime.

Capt. Clovix subjects Denathor to a long and repetitve interrogation; not getting the information he was looking for, Clovix sends Denathor to a holding cell to try again the next day.


Later, back at his desk, Alaric receives a secret communication, apparently from an Inquisitor, ordering him to release Denathor and enter a judgement of 'self-defense' -Clovix having not submitted the paperwork necessary to formally take over the investigation.

Returning to his small hab-unit, Denathor is contacted by the cloaked figure- Inquisition Interrogator Sebastian Rao- who enlists his aid in investigating the missing lasguns.


Down in the rough Hive-Bowels neighborhood of Z-Town, streetwise scummer Varn, fallen on hard times, swallows his pride and seeks employment with local crimelord Grim Largo at his public headquarters, a dive bar called The Spigot, so named for the huge industrial spiggot used as a makeshift buttress on the sagging front wall. Varn uses his drinking buddies within the Hammerjacks gang- who frequently work as hired muscle for Largo- as references.

305.815.M41. After services, Venris is contacted by some low-hive Enforcers, who ask him to identify the body of a murder victim who they believe to be his cousin Pietro.


Capt. Clovix, discovering that 'his' prisoner has been released, chews out Alaric, but can take no official action against him since Clovix never filed the necessary paperwork.

Denathor, recuperating form the previous days' injuries at his hab-unit, receives a servitor-delivered batch of Munitorium shipment logs, courtesy of Interrogator Rao. He settles in for a long day of searching for discrepancies similar to the one that alerted him to the missing lasguns.

When his references check out, Varn is hired by Grim Largo as a secondary driver on a mysterious shipment down into the Lower Bowels, a mission led by Largo's tech-savvy second-in-command, Dullos. After a long drive down to a dark and disused section of the Bowels boardering the Underhive, it is revealed that stolen lasguns are being traded to some offworld smugglers for a supply of the illegal narcotic Obscura. However, since the smugglers know that this will be the last in a series of exchanges, and having heard that Largo is understaffed due to a gang war between the Hammerjacks and the Screaming Skulls, the smugglers decide to betray Grim Largo; they try to kill his men and take the lasguns. Most of Largo's men are wiped out, but Dullos dives into a vehicle and flees; Varn manages to jump into the back. As they narrowly escape from the ambush [unaware that a tracking device has been attached to the vehicle by a hidden figure], shotgun blasts ring out followed by the [apparent] war-cry of the Screaming Skulls. The smugglers flee with most of the lasguns.

Offworld smugglers exchange stolen lasguns in the Underhive

Kaarl, investigating a strange power fluctuation [caused by Dullos overriding a security program to facilitate the rendezvous], comes upon the shoot-out between the smugglers and Largo's men. He is surprised by a hulking 'jungle fighter'-type Guard veteran who identifies himself as Sgt. Thrane, an agent of an Inquisitor [it was he who imitated the Screaming Skulls war-cry to scare off the smugglers]. Kaarl tries to close a hatchway to trap the smugglers, but the hatch closes too slowly and the smugglers get away. After staging the crime scene to look like a Screaming Skulls gang clash [Thrane had a 'run-in' with some Skulls on the way to the rendezvous], and hiding the few remaining lasguns, he takes down Kaarl's cognomen information and tells him that his boss will be in touch.

Sgt. Thrane contacts Kaarl, as Varn flees from the smugglers

Venris arrives at the seedy Bowels-level Enforcer precinct house [at the entrance to Z-Town] to identify his cousin's body and arrange for it to be sent uphive. The enforcers have clearly done little by way of investigating Pietro's death. When he leaves the precinct house, Venris doesn't notice that his servitor-cab is being followed by a battered old limousine; on a deserted stretch of the Arteria, the limousine forces the servitor-cab off the road. Two hulking heavies with guns get out and haul Venris into the limousine. After a short drive, he is dragged into a seedy pub with an enormous industrial spigot buttressing the front wall. Inside, he is taken to an overweight man [Largo] at a private table who asks him why he is snooping after a junkie. Venris says that "he confessed some very disturbing things to me...". Largo is surprised by his honesty and orders his men to take Venris out and 'dispose' of him.

Quintilla, a void-born woman who apprenticed in the art of assassination with a zealous Death Cult, but was expelled from their ranks, wanders the hive Bowels semi-lost, looking for sinners to punish in the name of the Emperor but finding few 'worthy' of her attention. She comes upon some likely candidates roughly dragging a man in the robes of a Ministorium cleric out of a seedy tavern. After a short but heated battle, she and Venris dispatch the thugs, then wipe out Largo's bodyguards inside The Spigot. Largo flees in panic out the back door from what he assumes to be a deliberate assassination attempt. Venris and Quintilla poke around the Spigot trying (unsuccessfully) to get some information, when the Enforcers arrive on the scene. Quintilla is nearly killed, but Venris repays her rescue buy convincing the Enforcers that they are innocent victims who acted in self-defense; confused and scared, the rookie Enforcer shoos them out the back door.

Dullos, driving like a madman, with Varn holding on for dear life, arrives at The Spigot; rounding the corner to the back alley, he slams head-on into Largo's fleeing limousine, sending Varn flying. Dullos jumps into Largo's vehicle and they flee, leaving the injured Varn behind.

Venris and Quintilla, walking down the alley from The Spigot, come upon Varn. Assuming that he may know something useful about the people responsible for his cousin's death, Venris offers to help Varn out. He flags down a servitor-cab and puts Varn and Quintilla up in a rented mid-hive hab unit for the night, then returns to his quarters in the Cathedral.

[As a squad of Enforcers try to make sense of the shootout at The Spigot, a shadowy figure, having tracked Dullos' vehicle to the alleyway, contacts a distant ally via encrypted microbead. He tells him to search servitor-cab records for three people matching the description of the suspects seen fleeing The Spigot; upon finding the address of the cab's destination he orders the information deleted before anyone else finds it...]

Introducing Adeptus-B

Canals and city "blocks" made by Adeptus-B

I would like to introduce you all to Adeptus-B. I met him while we were both working at Dark Horse Comics as Color Separators. About 2 years after I left the company, I asked Adeptus-B and another former Dark Horse co-worker to join a new D&D campaign I was starting. Well, over 12 years later, they are still in my gaming group... and not tiered of me yet!

Adeptus-B is currently running our Dark Heresy and Deathwatch campaigns, he is my Necromunda opponent, a fantastic figure painter/converter, and is prolific at making really cool terrain!

[edit] I found this post as a draft, and do not know why I never posted it! Sorry Adeptus-B for missing your introduction!!

I will leave the rest in Adeptus-B's hands.

Finetuning a Risky Venture

(click on image to enlarge)

As mentioned in other posts, I have been working on a map for Risk. It is loosely based on the PC game Risk II with a few additional territories (above the 5 territories already added in Risk II). Mainly I was attempting to prevent the castle strategy. But after an initial design, I wanted to make the map more esthetically pleasing and "in the style" of an 19th century map.

About a month ago, I ordered a set of Lord of the Rings Monopoly pieces to replace the (now inappropriate) modern cities and capitols from the 2008 edition (Revised) Risk. I planned on using the "hotels" (fortresses) as the capitols, and the "houses" (strongholds) as the cities, but now that I have them in hand, I am not sure.

I am also working on creating my own set of rules (beyond a 2-player variant from the last post)... I guess the most appropriate name would be Risk, Revised Edition 1.5. I am including elements from Risk II, Risk Legacy, and various incarnations of standard Risk rules (both official and variants) over the last 30 years. After I complete the map and get a better handle on the new set of rules, I will throw it out to those of you that pretend to read what I write! :)

Two Risk or Not Two Risk

In my opinion, Risk has some inherent problems, but it is still a game with a bunch of little guys (ie fun to play with).

I have managed to put my hands on the Risk rulebooks from 1980, 1993, 2003, 2008, and 2011. As far as game play, they are almost identical with only minor tweaks to troop reinforcements (how many you get per turn) and starting number of troops.

In '93 they introduced missions, and each proceeding set "improved" the mechanics to some degree. The '08 set significantly retooled of the mission system, plus they added cities and capitols. They also changed the official way to determine starting territories.

One element I thought strange was that the most significant changes between all 5 sets of rules are in the 2-player rules variant ('08 doesn’t even cover it). Within that sub-section, the biggest differences are whether or not to include neutral armies, and whether or not the allies are passive or aggressive.

I recently picked up the 2008 set because it had cities and capitols (unique to the set). But I will be playing this mostly with my son, and it didn’t cover how to play a 2-player game, I looked at how the other sets handled it. My old '78 set had 2-player rules (without allies), the ’93 set added 1 neutral ally, and the ’11 set is the same as ‘93. However, the '03 rules include a very extensive set of instructions for including multiple aggressive neutrals/allies.

After reading through all these editions, I made up my own rules!! Essentially, I blended the '93 and '03 rules in the framework of an '08 game (cities, capitols and enhanced objectives/missions). I am really pleased with how it all turned out. This is a PDF of what I came up with.


As I mentioned in a previous post, I also started working on a custom map for Risk. I like it, but have decided to take a dramatic turn in direction. I will share my progress in a later post,

(click on image to enlarge image)

I like what I have done so far, but have decided to take a completely different approach. I will share what I come up with another time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, this was supposed to be my Halloween post. RL has just been to consuming. So this is now a Day of Thanks post! I really appreciate all my followers and I hope you and yours have a great holiday!

Now, on to the fun stuff!! Below I have a brief synopses of what I have managed to work on over my absence from the world wide web... hope you like it!

My GM requested I make a graveyard
(click on image to enlarge)

My GM ran a special Halloween themed Dark Heresy encounter on the game session just prior to Halloween. Unfortunately, mostly due to my character's actions, the encounter never occurred in the graveyard (it stayed in the crypt below ground), so the terrain was never used! Oh well, it will get used eventually. I will explain how I made this in a later post.

Rel, our new scumer
(click on image to enlarge)

We have recently added a new player to our Dark Heresy game. In a future post, I will show all the conversions to this model, but for now I will say there is a head and weapon swap.

Remote Comm Unit
(click on image to enlarge)

Back in this post, I showed a WiP communications console. Here it is ready to be painted. I will also discuss this piece in more detail in a later post.

Trailer progect
(click on image to enlarge)

I am rally not sure where I am going with this one. I am half inclined to remove the element (an old school transformer toy) from the yellow trailer and just scratch-build a box-trailer. But on the other hand I could build a box trailer without the toy trailer, so why not just keep going to see what I end up with?

Image taken from the internets without permission

Finally, I have a project to complete for my GM--Convert 12 of the above HeroClix models to Rak'gol's for our future Deathwatch games. I have all the bitz (various tyranid arms) ready to go, and just need to find the time.

Risk Reward

Hey guys! It’s been awhile since I have posted and a ton of things have happened. (Note to Ron: This is not an apology!! :P) The most significant change in my life has been moving my mother-in-law in with us. I converted our barely used dining room to my new office (FYI, the family room functions as a dining room), and the old office is my in-laws room now. She has Alzheimer's. It was my suggestion to move her in as the previous situation was just not working. I am now a stay at home care giver *and* dad. At times it is an easy job, at times it is tough. But we are holding strong.

On to lighter news, my Dark Heresy campaign is plodding along at about 1 session a month (the best my group can manage), but I am having a blast!! We are planning to start our next session earlier than usual (by about 2 hours) and to drink less beer (so the last 2 hours is productive!!). We have also added a new player to the mix and I will showcase the work I did on the miniature in a later post.

My 1980 version of Risk with Roman Numeral pieces
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The other day, my son and I played his first game of Risk. He is 8 and has ADHD, but did really well for his first game. However, about 3/4's the way through the game, my son looked at me and said "Daddy, I am a boy who plays with soldiers, not a boy who plays with clock numbers." I about fell out of my chair laughing. We finished up the game and I spent the next two weeks researching how I could supply soldiers to my version of risk.

After spending most of my time pouring through what boardgamegeek.com had to offer, I decided to get the pieces from the 1993 version of Risk, and the entire 2008 version of Risk for the new rules and components.

Pieces from the 1993 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

Pieces from the 2008 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The 2008 "revised" version adds major and minor objectives, along with cities and capitals, plus rewards for completing objectives. It has also balanced the reinforcements rules. The only real "down side" is that the armies are simply arrows!?!

After about a week of searching, I found what I was looking for on eBay for a great price. The items arrived, and my son and I have played 2 more games of Risk. However, I found the 1980 2-player rules to be too simplistic, the 1993 version was the same but introduced a neutral ally, and the 2008 version doesn't even have a 2-player option!! Fortunately I was able to download the 2003 version of the rules because it has an extensive active neutral rules set.

I am working on writing up rules essentially blending the ’93 and ’03 2-player variant within the mechanics of the '08 rules set. Once I have it finalized, I will discuss it in a later post. 

My OCD kicked in and I also started working on a new map heavily influenced by the PC game Risk II. When I get further along, I will post it.

Its good to be back in the blogosphere!!

Happy Birthday

Image taken off the internets without permission

WOW! I made it to 2 years! I was out of town the actual day my blog hit "2", and I forgot to switch this post from draft to scheduled. Oh well... I can still post it retroactively on the correct day!!

The past two years has brought many RL challenges, and forced me to change my priorities on more than one occasion. But I really enjoy sharing my hobby and experiences. So I hope to be here in 2 more years!

Poll Results

Here are the results to the poll that I ran durring the month of May.

If you were to buy a new set of RPG dice, What would you most likely buy...

• 5% Individual Dice
• 5% In sets of 6
• 20% In sets of 7
• 5% In sets of 10
• 0 A large mixed lot
• 20% All one color
• 20% Sets of colors
• 5% Buy on-line
• 5% Buy at FLGS

Thank you to all who contributed!