Mighty Empires - Finished Map

So, I got all the tokens painted up, with clever little plugs in them to hold them up. I even got a bunch of the guys together to put the map together (so everyone gets to place tiles). We got it all hung on the wall...

And that's about it. I think this one is going to end up still-born, because Fantasy Flight has kicked the shit out of the small-end of gaming lately. Descent is pretty much scratching everyone's fantasy itch, and we were not impressed with the game pieces over much when assembling this. Things just fall off too much, and I don't think the pieces will have a long life expectancy. This really might make a better campaign than actual game, but I may still try for it some day.

At any rate, the map looks cool on the wall, even if this pic doesn't:



Here's the map laid on the table, with everyone's kingdoms all laid out. Seriously, we'd spent like two hours rolling up all the random tables to determine who got to put a village in the woods and such.



The stronghold of Chaos (mostly old Epic bits):


The seat of the king of Men (made from the top of a broken Minas Tirrith statue that came with Two Towers):


Castle of the Vampire Count (pretty much scratch built with beads and stuff, plus some War Machine bits):


The Elven Kingdom (scratchbuilt tree over wire frame):

Mighty (Empires) Finished Game

Well, that's out of the way!



The map is all flocked up and stuff. I used two thicknesses of flock, one for the fields of grass and another, thicker flock to represent big tall trees, "forrests" in game terms.



I also made up a crap-load of markers for the game. Most of them are pretty boring, but I did like what I cranked out for capitols for each of the player nations:





And, just for fun, I made a volcano!



Here's a few shots of the trial game I played with myself, just to see how things would work:





Now all I gotta do is get those slack-asses to get together and start playing the fucking thing. I spent enough time on it.

Mighty (Empires) Distraction

OK, I knew this was comming... all the work I've been doing on the paratroopers, I knew, would come to a screaching halt for God knows how long when the new stuff got here. Well, Might Empires showed up last Thursday. And now we'll have an example of why I should post things closer to real-time, instead of my standard retroactive postings.

Thursday the game came in. I dropped everything and started cleaning hex tiles. Let the distraction commence.

Friday, Geoff saw the map -- no painting, just assembeled plastic. Immediatly, he had to have one. This was good, for it would doble the size of the rhelm over which we would fight. However, he needed me to drive him to the mall. And when we got there, he'd forgotten his wallet. Fucker. Anyway, we got him a map, and stayed up until 2 playing with the air brush to get them painted. We got both maps knocked out in the night -- maybe this wouldn't be such a distraction after all? I painted the mountains and rivers on both maps, but other than that Geoff painted his own. At the end of the night, this is what my map looked like:



By the next morning, the borders of the hexes were painted and the river had a coat of thick clearness on it.

The weekend was kind of general stuff, a bit of details and kung fu. I was starting to paint up all the little markers, and think about all the additional markers I'd need to play the game with the old rules... this was going to take a good while...

Then I got laid off on Monday. Fuckers. 10 years with the company, and new management shows me the door. Fuck 'em.

So I had a bit of free time on my hands.... Now all the markers with the game are painted, the map is all edged and clear coated. I need to do more markers, paint 'em, and flock the map. Geoff also needs flock, so we'll probably do that together. Its comming along nicely.

And I should take delivery of my Chinese today or tomarrow. Things are good in game land.

Now, if any one knows about a good job opening for a server monkey...

Mighty Air Bases

With the upcoming release of Mighty Empires, Games Workshop included a pair of demo tiles for the game as an insert with this month's issue of White Dwarf. The plastic map hexes have really sparked my eye, more to come on that later as it develops. But in the mean time, I had these random little tiles sitting around, but wasn't sure what I'd do with them. Then I found three cheap, plastic, preprinted Messerschmitts with matching paint schemes on sale at Hobby Lobby for $6 each. Bingo, now I've got air support! But they would need bases that looked better than the little black stands.... how would I model very small terrain.... you see where this is going, right?

I give you the Mighty Air Base:



The town in the center of its base is a stock GW city element for Mighty Empires. The other towns were made by cutting up the Dwarf Brewery and Wizard's Towers for all the little shapes.



I painted them up more or less like I would any infrantry base for my Panzergrenadier force, using the same dirt, rock, and base edge colors. Then I went through and picked out the farms, buildings, etc.





I painted the river in successively lighter shades of blue, then covered it in a thick layer of Krylon Krystal Clear (at least I think that's what its called...). The swamp got a quick wash of breen and brown in, and then Krystal Clear with a little brown ink on it was dabbed into the low spots. Two quick passes with different colors of flock gave me grass and woods.

I had to enlarge the holes slightly to accept the clear posts from some GW flying bases, and then glued the posts onto the aircraft. This way I can use these bases with any little planes I pick up, so long as I mount them on the same size post. To make this set, I had to purchase one copy of White Dwarf; I got the other sprew off my boy Breakdance's copy.