A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to play in a Back to the Future-themed Shadows of Brimstone game. The adventure was called "Shadows of Hill Valley: 1885," and had the players being hired by the local Blacksmith (the mysterious Emmett Brown) to clear out the mines where he had hidden one of his "inventions."
Hans, the game host, brought props for the table and whiskey for the players. Along with our extended Brimstone theme music all the props really brought forth the Old West theme. In this post I put up some highlight pics from the game, to help understand the glory that evolves from a bunch of middle-aged men pretending to be cowboys.
No big deal, just buying dynamite and whiskey in Old West Hill Valley.
Now that I've gotten all my Shadows of Brimstone figs painted, we're actually back to playing the game again. For our opening game back at the table we decided to create brand new characters and randomly roll the mission. Interestingly, we ended up fighting both big boss monsters, the Harbinger and the Goliath, in the same game. I figured I'd post some pics and a quick write-up of that game for fans of the Brimstone.
No foray into the Old West is complete without some Templeton Rye.
One thing that I think really pulls a miniature together that is often overlooked is a good but simple base. If a miniature is beautifully painted but has a bare black base, it will remind the viewer that its just a simple plastic miniature and pull them out of the game. Similarly, I think that if a miniature base is full of little knick-knacks and skulls and broken swords and bodies and what-have-you and is overly complex, then it takes away from the miniature itself. Also I'm a pretty lazy hobbyist, so I like to base my minis simply.
Here's how I base my miniatures for the Flying Frog Cowboys vs. Cthulhu game Shadows of Brimstone. Since 90%+ of the games occur in an Old West Mine, I decided make just a simple rocky base for all the minis.
I know its been a while since I've talked Shadows of Brimstone, but that's just because I was trying to finish painting all the minis (using only the official Shadows of Brimstone paint sets) before playing again. However it was a LOT more work than I realized when I started, so it has been slower going than I originally anticipated. Especially since I only paint on the weekends. With that in mind I decided to just shift it into overdrive and speed-paint all the remaining guys.
Almost there...
But that's not what this post is about, this is about fixing glaring past mistakes, or, as I like to call it, "What the hell did Past Cory screw me over with this time?"
Things are going well with the upcoming Vorpal Chainsword podcast, however the editing and page building doesn't leave as much time for painting. But sometimes you've just got to stop, take a breath, relax, and paint up some demon serpents. For your mental health. I took a break from podcast prep last night to paint up some Hellbats from the Shadows of Brimstone boardgame.
Here's some quick glamour shots of the newly-painted flying snake-things.
Played another game of Shadows of Brimstone with the game crew the other day. This time I decided to try one of the 'fixed map' adventures, and utilize my recently-constructed mini dry ice fog machine. So before they came over I had the whole map set up and ready to go. I remember almost nothing from the game itself (too much creativity juice beforehand), but I got a few pretty cool pics of it on my phone, so it must've been a lot of fun.
A while back I was I was ranting about the amount of chits and cards that modern-day boardgames from Fantasy Flight Games and Flying Frog Productions were using. In an attempt to get me to shut up about it, Mary picked up a cheap rotating plastic spice rack one day to help me organize my decks of cards during gameplay. After playing with it a bit, we added some improvements to the system and created the ultimate FFG/FFP boardgaming accessory, which we call:
Played a big game of Shadows of Brimstone with my local gaming crew this week, and this time I incorporated Both Core sets. So all monsters, dimensions, and items were on the table from both Alternate dimensions. I wanted to play a game where we had no idea where we were going before we stepped through any portals. It was quite an adventure (lots of pictures below all the intro text, I promise).
Having background or 'theme' music on while gaming is really a double-edged sword. If all players know the game well and don't have severe ADHD then it can be a real mood-enhancer for a thematic game. Like playing spooky sounds in a Halloween/Ravenloft game or Daft Punk in the background of a Cyberpunk game. But if you are trying to teach the rules to people then the background music, no matter how good, can be distracting and bring the game to a halt. Note: In all cases background music should be just that, in the background, and therefore at a very low volume during the game.
As most of you know, Flying Frog Productions always includes a self-published Soundtrack CD in each of their boardgames. These are a very mixed bag of synthesized and digitized original compositions by FFP. The digital music's okay most of the time, if a little rough, but the games themselves last far longer than the CD, so the songs get old, fast. Often by the fifth turn someone is ready to fling that CD right out of the window. Shadows of Brimstone has the best FFP soundtrack CD yet in my opinion and I genuinely like it, but even that album gets booed out of the room when I have more music-discerning players over for a game of Brimstone. Nevertheless the dark old west-style theme of Shadows does yearn for a good background soundtrack, and I believe I've stumbled upon an alternative soundtrack for Shadows of Brimstone.
Iron Horse: Fade to Bluegrass
Iron Horse takes Metal and Rock songs and churns them through the Bluegrass-ifier. Metallica's songs lend themselves surprisingly well to Bluegrassification, so the resultant compositions on Iron Horse's two-volume Metallica Tribute Album (Fade to Bluegrass) have a real familiar-but-creepy feel to them. Perfect for Brimstone!
PS: Another benefit is that Iron Horse is available for unlimited streaming on Amazon Prime, if like me you've already signed away your soul and first born to the Overlords of Amazon.
Today will be a quick update on some Brimstone painting progress.
Because of ancient maths and the esoteric laws of the Multiverse, I always paint character minis in threes. On one hand painting three different minis at once is enough real estate that I can paint a color on one, move on to the second, then on to the third, and by that time the first mini is dry enough for me to add another color to it. Keeps the downtime to a minimum. On the other hand, three different minis is not so much diversity in color schemes and outfit styles that I become overwhelmed with the options and just give up and watch something like DragonFyre on Netflix.
So without further ado, I present my latest three heroes from Shadows of Brimstone: the Bandito, the Gunslinger, and the Marshall.
Were denim jeans around in the old west? I could look it up...or just assume that if they weren't then the gunslinger must have found some in an alternate dimension.
That leaves six heroes painted and just three heroes left from the Core Sets (the Saloon girl, the Rancher, and the Preacher). After they're done then I can move onto the hordes of monsters. Good times.
Sometimes you want to game on a regular old Tuesday, but your buddies aren't spontaneously available to come over and play another game of Shadows of Brimstone. Even Mary was busy and not interested in a pick-up game. So I took it upon myself to take my Level 2 Indian Scout, Mingo, into the mines for a bit of a Solo Adventure. I wanted to see how well the game scales to a single adventurer as well as use some of my newly-constructed minis from 'The City of the Ancients' Core Set.
Proud and (over)confident Level 2 Mingo, ready to take on the City of the Ancients!
So I was setting up another game of Brimstone the other day and something struck my eye. I notice it with every boardgame with similar kinds of cardboard map tiles (Ravenloft, Doom, etc.), and that is the edges of those cardboard tiles that you pop out of the big templates. They're so bright white. The rest of the tile has nice art on it but I feel like the unpainted edges really detract from the effectiveness of the art on the tile. Everything is outlined by this glaring white line on the map, which is distracting.
Its September and its starting to get cold again here in the upper Midwest. And while to many people that may mean a respite from lawn mowing or relief from mosquitoes, to a miniature painter it has a more sinister chill. That is, oncoming winter gives one the realization that they'd better prime their miniatures now, or they may have to wait until Spring.
As a wargamer trying to build a new set of city terrain, miniature painter with tons of unpainted Reaper Bones sitting around, or Dungeon Master with writers block, sometimes it takes a little extra push to get the brain-juices flowing enough to set aside time to continue your projects. Often because your projects require you to access the Creativity part of the brain, and yet also require you to buckle down and get the Productivity part of the brain going.
For instances like this, I have invented something that will revolutionize the way you do game prep. Here's the idea behind its formulation: as is well known and researched thoroughly by well-respected agencies, alcohol sparks the creativity neurons in the brain to let loose their inhibitions and think about stuff like spaceships and sorcerers. On the other hand, caffeine sparks the productivity part of the brain to get you to pick up the pen or paintbrush and start working and maintain focus on things you need to get done, like corporate spreadsheets and TPS reports. So in a flash of genius, we here at VC Labs thought... "Why not combine them?"
I call it: Cyberninja's Cyberstonishing Producto-Creativity Juice.
At GenCon this year I picked up Shadows of Brimstone. A Kickstarter'd game by Flying Frog productions which just barely got its Core boxes out the door before the convention.
Premise: Its 1869. Prospectors found a magic crystal called 'Darkstone' in some mines that everyone wants. Naturally they 'dug too deep' and opened up evil portals to alien dimensions. Now monsters stalk the mines and countryside, eating livestock and kidnapping folks. Is your posse of cowboys bad enough dudes to rescue the president?
