Anachrony - Complete

Anachrony is a beast of a board game,  a massive worker placement game that deals with a unique setting in the distant future, time travel, mechs and cults.

It's a really neat game and I highly recommend it. 

Anyway, this is one of the first games i've done almost entirely with the airbrush for base colours. And boy did it save some time. Just check the video below

Anyway, here are the final products, and I went for quite different styles with each fig. 

The yellow based dude is very basic, almost entirely airbrushed with very few brush details. 

The blue squidy thing has a lot of brush effects and the first time I've ever tried doing a "verdigris" effect on a model. The lower half of the model is supposed to look like worn old copper with that blue verdigris effect, and the top slightly rusty. 

The green dude is a very standard brush job with warm greens and tans to look as organic as possible. Probably the most time intensive of the models. 

The red dude was all about the contrast between red and yellow, and he actually looks pretty boss in person.

And finally, the black dude, who is literally airbrushed, washed and given a little bit of electric blue for flavour. 

All the dudes in their storage box. 

Star Wars Rebellion - Complete

Quick update today on Star Wars Rebellion.

Rebellion is a great game, one of the best two player lite wargames on the market, and is very comparable to War of the Ring. 

A lot of very small models, so I didn't go too crazy on the details. All I want is for them to look good on the table, not under a zoom lens. 

The Rebels were almost all done in a "brown scale" from a deep brown to beige. Now a lot of rebel units are almost white in the canon, but I wanted the pieces to look like a coherent faction, when opposed to the Imperials who were done in a "grey scale"

I personally think a few painters forget that they need to be game pieces first and foremost, and while painting units accurately is all well and good, it makes them slightly annoying to play with. 

I think I nailed a good contrast between the two factions here. 

Zombicide - Finale

All of Zombicide is now finished

ALL OF IT!

I am so glad I decided to stick with the "monochrome" zombies and only paint the survivors seriously. I feel pity for anyone who spent hours and hours and hours on painted hundreds of disposable zombies, when they just end up looking like a blurry pile of blobs on the board anyway. 

This was a beast of a job, even with a gazillion short cuts. 

Survivors

Zombivores

Standard Horde

Beserkers

Toxic Zombies

Skinner Group 1

Skinner Group 2

Seeker group

Companions

Game in play

Scythe - Complete

So, I finally decided the paint something for the first time in..... i dunno.... forever! Almost entirely motivated by the fact I got my airbrush working again, so base coating and undercoating is now rather painless. 

I put a poll up on the solo-boardgamers group and asked "what game should I finish off doing", because I have about 10 in partial completion and just haven't finished them off. 

Until today. 

All airships were base coated using an Airbrush, which made them take less time to paint than one of the mechs. Anyway, enjoy! 

Red Dust Rebellion - Factions and interactions

Red Dust Rebellion - A Mars COIN game.

Boardgames are art? What does that mean?

One thing I've been fascinated with lately is the idea of board gaming as an evolving art form. Art forms take time to mature, to develop complex themes and ideas, but I think Board-Gaming is getting there. 

Boardgames are a unique art form, because it is about creating an experience for players, about evoking certain thoughts, emotions and ideas. Whether that's in a purely intellectually sense in an abstract game like Chess or a purely social sense with games like the Resistance.

And i'm not talking about the literal artwork on a game, but the idea of a game as art itself. 

Boardgames can be just a simple toy, but there is more to them than that. Just as Computer games and film explore settings, characters, stories and emotions, so do boardgames. And as an art form, its starting to present mature and interesting themes. 

Boardgames are a lot like music, an art form that can be recreated by others and each time it's interpretation is influenced by its participants. Just as "I will survive" sounds different when played by Gloria Gaynor or Cake. Two different groups of players will have a different experience each time they play a game.

So what do we get from this art form?

Well, a kaleidoscope of experiences depending on what games you play. 

Historic wargaming can be very intellectually stimulating, as the competition and competitive nature of the game tests your reasoning against other people. But its also a medium for traditional arts, such as painting and sculpting. Add to that the interest Wargamers show in researching the periods they play in to ensure historical accuracy, and you can see the impact the art has on them.

Fantasy/Sci Fi Wargaming is the same, asides from instead of researching the history, players tend to immerse themselves in works of fiction. And for a lot of people, army selection is a form of artistic expression. People play Space Wolves, for the most part, because they find space vikings cool. 

Euro style games tend to focus on decision making, maximizing moves, efficiency and reacting to changes in the board state. These games test us in intellectual ways, and the emotions that come about are normally to do with how well we executed our plans. 

Games with heavy social elements, like Spyfall, Battlestar Galactica and Coup test our social skills and expose our social dynamics. It's rare that we tell utter lies to our closest friends, but in these games, that is the norm. We get to experience deception and betrayal, misdirection and obfuscation and enjoy it. I can't think of any other time or place where you can do that with friends. 

And co-operative games explore group social dynamics. How much does one person dominate, do you problem solve as a team, do you defer to others, or do you just "do your thing".

Even solo games provide an interesting experience in introspection that's quite unique. 

Still counts for solo play

These are broad strokes, and your millage may vary. But if you have played a boardgame, and have at least one story about "the time that....", then the games have impacted you as an experiential art form. 

Every gamer has had a moment a bit like this. 

Does it matter?

I don't really know. Like a lot of art forms, you don't have to delve too deep to enjoy them. You can enjoy music without knowing what counterpoint is or what Phrygian mode sounds like. You can enjoy a movie without a degree in film studies (some might argue its easier to enjoy film then). And you can look at a painting and appreciate it without being able to hold a brush. 

But for me, I think i'm more interested in looking at what a game delivers, what experience its going for, and how that impacts on a social group than I ever have been before. 

And as a result, i've been looking at games with different themes, different ideas and different experiences a lot more than before. But more about that later.