Thursday, February 26, 2015

26FEB2015 Reaper Bones and Delta Ceramcoat Experiment



I finally had the opportunity to buy some Reaper Bones minatures at a local game shop here in Omaha, well Bellevue really.  When I found a copy of Ogre (see previous article) for $2.95 I had to buy it since it was cheep.  I also found I had to spend $5 minimum if I was going to use the only form of payment I had on hand, my debit card.

So I bought some SF themed Bones Chronoscope 28mm miniatures. 





 Here is the Nova Corp Sgt. work in progress thus far.  Minimal clean up of mold lines was required in a few spots, and the base is slightly warped.  I opted to just paint right out of the box lacking any form of patience waiting for water to boil. 


I was itching to paint.  I jumped right in with a base coat of black using Delta Ceramcoat.  No primer is required for the Reaper Bones, they use a good polymer that requires none.  For that price you see on the bottle, I got 8 oz. of paint, and it rivals anything else I've used, to include Liquitex!  In fact, I didn't have to water it down like I do my Liquitex.  Forget spending $3 or more on an ounce or less from Citadel or Vajello!  Unless I need a specific color I can't mix, I'm sold on the Delta if they work as well as the black did.  Look Ma, no brush strokes on that mini!
The rest of the Squad out of the packages.  They came in blisters of three.  Three male guards in one, three female in the other.  All share the same pose.  Sadly, the female guards needed the most adjustments, but again I just base coated them without boiling water and straitening things out.  What was I thinking?  Oh, yeah, I was itching to paint.

 I got all seven base coated and ready to before heading off for my last final of this quarter!  Not too shabby for about half an hours work!  No spray primer, no brush strokes from the acrylic paint, and decent looking miniatures with crisp details ready to be picked out with good paint.

Now, the hard part, planning how I'm going to paint this force.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

24FEB2015 Ogre Pocket Edition!

It is back after thirty five years!



I'm a recent player however, having discovered Ogre through GEV on my dad's game shelf back in 1994 when I was in the sixth grade.

Needless to say, I'm still pretty excited to see another Ogre reboot hot on the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign and the Ogre Designers Edition (which I could not acquire due to lack of game funding).  Clearly, this edition was WELL within my budget at less than $3.00!

While deceptively inexpensive and simple to pick up and play, it is the next best game to Risk to get a person into wargaming.  Simplicity is sometimes the best system when it comes to rules, and you would be hard pressed to find an easier system to pick up that can still yield an afternoons worth of gaming by playing through the scenarios and working with what you have.

All your classic Ogre scenarios are there in the booklet.  Old hands will appreciate the rules smelling new and feeling crisp in your hands with a sharp looking map and counters.

A huge plus with this edition of the game is the pre-cut counters on thicker sheets of card stock.  No more sore hands and mis-cut pieces on account of missing with the ruler and knife!

I figured I would show off my collection a bit here for a good comparison.  Around 2000 SJ Games attempted a reboot of Ogre, and I avidly sought out just about everything they offered during that period.  You can see how the new Pocket Edition compares with the 2000 reboot release of Ogre/GEV on the right.  PE has the classic map with nothing but simple filled in hexes for craters and bold rubble lines along hexes while the '00 edition has the full color and detail map.  I even have some uncut counters from my Ogre Reinforcement pack to compare with the new PE counters!  Pardon the miniature sculpting mess...

Now, I just need to find local players and punch the pieces out.