That’s so sick, lol. Kinda jealous.
Does your brother play magic too? Theres a format called Judges tower, its for people who hate themselfes and i think hed love it lol!
The basic rules are, everybody has infinite life, you attack every turn and your opponent has to block with everything, you start the game with zero cards and the only way you can win is if the other person breaks the rules. It doesnt have to be hardcore cheating, but things like tapping something with vigilance when you attack or forgetting to untap land are considered breaking the rules.
I play magic too if you couldnt tell. It sounds like you play izzet burn. If your niv mizzet is the one that draws cards them oh boy do i have news for you.
He has an infinite damage combo. You need this one soulbond card, tandem lookout. Every time you draw a card, niv deals damage, thanks to tandem lookout everytime niv deals damage you draw a card!
It’s been a while since I’ve played (too much time on these forums and XBL), so I’m not up to date with newer cards, but thanks! I’ll definitely look into that card! 
awesome work as always! i found a box of the updated Necron Immortals, im thinking of doing a solid contrast color set up with their exoskeletons and their armor plating. gonna be a while longer till i start work on these things but already got some ideas going
Do you mean using a color (let’s say purple) instead of going with the traditional silver or gold?
their exoskeleton im gonna stay with a metallic color of which i am not sure, while the armor plates will be a solid one for a matte look
Well, this is going to sound pretty biased, but going with gold/brassy metallics and a decent emerald green seems like it works pretty well, and it would match up with those green acrylics used for their power cores too.
yeah sounds good, im just trying to go for something a little different since i dont plan on fielding these boys at all in any games. im more into painting them and making em look best i can because the stress relief is godly lol. i was thinking maybe going with red or blue cores though i know their whole thing is the “sickly green” as the stories say hehehe
found this on the google, man looks awesome with blue energy set up
If that’s what you’re thinking of going with, I highly recommend silver for the metals, since I think blue-white works better with silver than gold.
Another update on the Drakhun; the mounted version is complete (minus basing) but I still need to finish the model on foot. When you first kill the model he loses some rules and the horse dies but he gets a second life on foot.
1 Like
Figured I’d probably post in here a bit.
It should probably come as no surprise to people that I like thinking about the design of board games. I’m not much of a miniatures/war game/roleplaying kind of guy, but I watch a lot of videos on board game reviews (like, hundreds of them) just so that I can know what is out there and what cool things people are designing in the space, anywhere from party games to deck builders to abstract games to euros.
In many ways, I actually kind of like thinking about the design space for games more than I like actually playing them, heh. That’s probably because games are expensive and a lot of the group I used to game with has moved away. But also because I am a very depth-focused kind of guy… breadth is cool, but it would really bother me to buy a game, play it once or twice, then never play it again because new games are constantly being released. When I get involved with a game, I like to know there is a lot of depth there (and reason to explore that depth, because the game is popular, etc).
Anyway, I used to play a lot of chess as a kid, but haven’t played at all for at least a decade now. But abstract games kind of have a place in my heart, and it seems there are some pretty cool abstract games this year worth checking out. Go search for some online reviews if any of the descriptions interest you:
-
Onitama
A chess-like game that is played on a 5x5 board, with 5 pieces per side that all move the same way, except one is marked as a king. You and your opponent are each given 2 movement cards that indicate possible movement from a square (usually a card will give you 3 or 4 options in a pattern), with 1 spare movement card placed to the side.
On your turn you can spend one of your 2 cards to move any piece as indicated, but then you trade that card with the spare card on the side. Your opponent then moves based on his available movement, and then takes the spare card (which was your previous card). The game cycles back and forth like this until you capture the king, or until one king reaches the back center square of his opponent. It’s supposed to be a cool “chess lite” with some tactical decisions and a really nice production. I imagine a computer can solve it pretty easily, but it seems like a great game for people who like the idea of chess, but not chess itself, if that makes sense. -
Santorini (video here)
This game really got my attention after hearing it recommended and seeing a preview of it. Another abstract game played on a 5x5 grid, this time you have 2 workers. On your turn, you do two things: you move one of your workers to an adjacent square, like the king in chess, and then you build a tower on one of the new adjacent squares. If there is already a tower built on that square, you build a 2nd level, and then a 3rd. Finally, when you build the 4th level, you put a dome on top, indicating that nobody can build or move to this square anymore. Your goal is to move a worker to the 3rd level, and you win the game. You also get to choose a Greek god, each with a special power that bends a rule in the game, as your character. So some people can move twice before building, others can block some squares from being built on, etc.
The idea sounds cool, but really the production of the game looks fantastic. Santorini is a Greek island famous for white buildings with blue domes, and the design of the board + the structures just makes the game look stunning while playing it. It was Kickstarted and I think backers are getting their copies roughly now, but it’ll be available to regular peeps in January. I think I might even just buy this game without anyone to play it with, just because it looks so cool. Again, I dunno how much depth the game has based on computer search, but a mathematician designed it and has been working on it for 30 years, so I imagine there is enough depth there to not be immediately solvable.
Just two games that might interest you if you enjoy abstract games!
Also, has anyone here played (or heard of) Mechs vs. Minions? It’s an extremely gorgeous cooperative game produced by Riot, the guys who make League of Legends, and it’s kind of taking the board game world by storm right now.
The games which I own which see MAJOR table time for board game days are Pandemic, Zombicide Black Plague, Lords Of Waterdeep, and Betrayal At House On The Hill.
Other than Waterdeep, the other three have cooperative and random elements to them, which I think is something that helps keep each play session feeling different. We cycle through almost all of the games we own at various times, since some of them are bigger and more complicated, but others are simple and quick - some nights we pick a single big game to play and other nights we play a ton of small games. It really depends on the group you’re playing with, I think, but I think it’s possible to own a lot of games and still play most of if not all of them fairly often.
I haven’t heard of Onitama or Santorini, and from your descriptions it’s hard for me to tell whether I would like them. I do like chess, and Onitama’s concept of using cards to move is interesting, but only having 5 available cards trading around between you and your opponent seems too uniform to me. I haven’t played a real game of chess in a few years either.
Have you ever played Stratego? I consider it one of the very few “mainstream” board games which is actually any good, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than chess because of the setup/mystery elements it has.
You have a large number of pieces, in several different categories;
-
Your flag; if an opponent’s piece ever touches your flag, you lose!
-
Bombs; you place them around your board zone and they cannot move, but any enemy piece except the Sapper will be killed immediately!
-
Various pieces (and multiples of most of them) numbered 1-10 in increasing strength. When two pieces attempt to occupy the same square, the higher number kills the other. Nothing happens on a tie, or both die, I can’t remember.
-
one Spy - the only piece which is capable of killing any other piece except for a bomb if it is the attacker. So a Spy can kill a 10 (which could otherwise only die stepping on a bomb) if it attacks, but can be killed by any enemy piece which attacks it.
The general principle is that you set up a fairly large board area (in terms of # of squares) with two lake areas in the middle to prevent it from becoming a completely open field; all of your pieces are hidden from your opponent, so when you are moving pieces around they do not know what is moving towards them until an attack happens, when you both reveal your pieces. There’s a ton of room for deceit and deception, and because the players set up all of their own pieces however they want to, every game is different. Some of the pieces have special abilities, too; the 2s can move any number of spaces in a single direction, and are great at sniping out spies or investigating unknown pieces. The 3s are Sappers and will destroy enemy bombs they come into contact with.
If you’re in the mood for a chess-like game, I would definitely recommend Stratego. There are multiple versions of it, so you could pick up Star Wars Stratego, or Sci Fi Stratego, or Lord Of The Rings Stratego etc, which also sometimes have their own special rules which can be added in to fit the theme.
I needed to paint at least ten points in December to complete the painting challenge I’m taking part in, and the unit of infantry I was working on has been taking me a long time. When compounded with the holidays and everything else going on, I was barely ever putting brush to model and I was starting to get concerned about running out of time.
I changed tack and assembled & painted up a Marauder warjack this weekend, who happens to be worth exactly 10 points! Not only am I set for the month in case I don’t paint anything else, but I have a new utility piece to play with.
This guy is pretty straight-forward. It has no guns and while the two melee weapons (piston hammers) do a decent amount of damage, the only special abilities it has involve using it’s turn to smash other models out of the way instead of fighting. Doing so is useful because it can prevent enemies from scoring points by bumping someone away from an objective, or move a model who is physically between me and something important.
Since I’ve never used one of these I’m excited to work its utility into my game plans.
1 Like
Does Hearhtstone count? 
It has been four months, how’s the figurine painting @xSkeletalx?
You ever consider picking up the Gears of War board game, was curious what your take on it would be.
I’ll be honest, I’ve slacked on painting, though I’m ready to get back into it now.
I took a break after finishing my December goal (getting at least ten points painted) because I had been pushing myself hard to work through painting projects. I just haven’t actually gone back to it, distracted as I’ve been by events (KIWC) and other games (mainly For Honor), as well as some serious personal problems.
I’ll show you the most recent pieces I’ve picked up, though my “to be done” project box is pretty full already!
Heavy armored frost spellcaster:
Commander model + bodyguards:
Besides these and other models for my army, I still need to finish painting up the hundreds of pieces for Zombicide Black Plague; the next expansion hits Kickstarter at the end of May, and I’ll be buying into that. I expect it will double the amount of pieces, if not add even more than that.
I still haven’t picked up the Gears Of War board game, but I definitely want to. I actually think I’d find it very easy to paint those pieces, and it’s a project I do want to get to at some point. Would you recommend the game itself?