Monday, April 30, 2012

Blood Splattered Dice

Quarantine Zone uses regular old d6s to resolve everything so I thought I should try to spice them up a bit. I bought some crappy dollar store dice packs and borrowed some bright red spray paint from one of my friends - he does alot of spray paint and stencil on canvas artwork and he is very talented. Anyway, I sprayed the red paint on the end of an old toothbrush until it was dripping wet and then flicked the paint off onto my pile of dice. I tried to vary my flicks so that in some spots big drops appeared and some areas only got a light mist. They took a long time to dry but I think they came out pretty good ->

Easy homemade bloody dice - they are fun to roll.

Recently when I was in a Chapters bookstore with my pretty lady I found these awesome little zombie notebooks.

I immediately snapped up two. Inside half of the pages are lined and the facing pages are blank, with a very faint green image of the cover art on every page. The art is by Rob Sacchetto but good luck finding somewhere to buy these online cuz I can't. I guess I'm planning to fill these in with the rules for Q-Z at some point but right now I am too worried I will ruin them so they are just sitting on my shelf looking nice.

And finally here is a shot of my status cards for Q-Z.

    Looking pretty good if I do say so myself.


-Cheers!


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Quarantine Zone- Character Generation

To make a character for Quarantine Zone you need some paper and some dice. Quarantine Zone uses only standard six sided dice.  I recommend at least a small handful of dice for each player. It would ease play if you have two types of easily distinguishable dice ( two colors of dice or different sizes) but not strictly necessary.

Quarantine Zone is set approximately 6 months after a massive outbreak of the zombie virus swept across the world. Each player should try to imagine for themselves a tough survivor who has managed to last this long using wits and luck. What does your character look like? What did your character do before the apocalypse? How did you manage to survive this long?

To start with each player should write a name for their character at the top of a sheet of paper and write the names of these 6 abilities in a column down the side of the page.

Each Player character has 6 ability scores-'B.R.A.I.N.S.'

Brawn- How physically tough and strong a character is. Used in hand to hand combat and to resist illness.

Reflexes- A character's speed and agility, also used to measure manual dexterity.

Attitude- A character's ability to connect and make relationships. Used in social situations.

Intellect- The knowledge and mental skill of the character. Determines starting skill points and used to resolve intelligence based checks.

Nerve- A character's ability to stay calm in difficult situations and overcome fears. Used to shoot ranged weapons.

Search- A character's ability to notice details. Used to scavenge supplies.

Now roll 6 dice as d3s (1-2=1/3-4=2/5-6=3) and note down your results on a scrap piece of paper. Assign one of your dice results to each ability score above. This should give you a score of between 1-3 in all of your abilities.

Each character will start with:
  • One sturdy melee weapon ( a baseball ball, length of metal pipe, or meat cleaver )
  • One random piece of gear.
  • One backpack.
  • Three cans of food.
  • Three bottles of water. 
 Each character is also assumed to be carrying some simple miscellaneous equipment such as can-openers, and similar minor stuff as well as seasonally appropriate if not ideal clothing and footwear.

Unless otherwise noted a character may never carry more than:
  • Two weapons.
  • Three pieces of gear.
  • Six cans of food.
  • Six bottles of water.
There are certain Talents which can be taken to increase how many weapons or pieces of gear a character can carry. These encumbrance rules are meant to be simple and represent the survivors trying to travel light and be self-sufficient, carrying only their own gear in case of separation or mishap.

-Ok, so good start here. Talents and Traits to come, as well as equipment lists.

-Cheers!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Skull Island Rivals

Like many kids I was absolutely in love with dinosaurs. When I was a bit older I got completely enthralled by ancient Aztec and Mayan culture. When I started getting into Warhammer my first purchase was a box of Lizardman Saurus Warriors (Aztec dinosaurs). Recently I added a handful of "tribal folk" miniatures to my collection of fantasy jungle stuff. My collection of jungle terrain has been slowly growing for many years, I have a bunch of aquarium plants for jungle trees and two half finished pyramids. I'm big fan of Peter Jackson's King Kong and a HUGE fan of module 'X1 The Isle of Dread'. I recently bought three rather expensive solid toy animals from a kinda higher end kids toy store- the kind with educational toys instead of action figures. I might show some pics of the third animal later on but here are the first two since they are related and both finished :





I repainted them and mounted them on CDs for bases. I covered the top of the CDs with really cheap plasticine and painted them with two coats of white glue, then sprinkle sand on and paint as you would normally. There are some aquarium plants on there as well and a piece of garden tree bark to look like stone on the T-Rex's base. The brown bases look a little bare so I think I will put some patches of grass or flock down at some point. And yeah there is one of my half-painted tribals for scale.

Hopefully I can pick up some pulp era explorers someday.

Cheers!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Mordheim Progress

Some new wip pics:

 Building 1 front

 Building 1 back

 Building 1 side

 Building 2

 Building 3 front

 Building 3 side

Building 3 back

 Woodpile & chopping block

 Busted cart

 Busted cart other side

Intact wagon

Had a freak snowstorm yesterday so I got today off work. Going to get some paint on these today hopefully. Cheers!

Friday, April 13, 2012

Here comes Papa Nurgle!

 I really like Nurgle. I don't own much chaos stuff but Nurgle is by far the coolest power. I like undivided as well though. So anyway, the cool thing about nurgle demons is that they are super easy to sculpt yourself, like I did a few years ago with this guy:






So there he is, my homemade greater demon. I used some extra hands from the warhammer giant. He is plasticine sculpted up around a rubber bouncy ball. He needs a little bit of a facelift, maybe I could redo my sloppy paint-job. I think he will look particularly good stomping down the streets of Mordheim. I will probably sculpt up a handful of nurglings to accompany him 

Cheers!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Mordheim update

 Ok, just some random stuff I photographed on my work table. Eventually I will post some nice shots all staged and such of the gameboard. I also have been coming up with some rule changes and house rules.

 I bought some charming little ceramic houses from the dollar store.

 I am going to base these up, give them some details and some fresh paint.

 I 'm building small additions onto two of them to extend the size and cover up some undesirable features.

 Covering up this extra small door and staircase.

 I really like this one, I am leaving it mostly alone.

 I will paint them kinda drab and rundown looking, but not actually ruined. Hopefully they will work as a peasant village for other games or as Mordheim pieces.

Just glued down a frame for the cardboard roof to rest on. I am going to try to make some building with roofs that are gently sloped. I like the idea of models running along the rooftops and fighting.

Cheers!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Mordheim - The City of the Dammed!!!

"Mordheim, once a great city capital of the Empire's most northern realm, was slowly enveloped by corruption. The only beacon of hope and sanity in Mordheim was the Convent of the Sisterhood of Sigmar. Weeks before the end of the year 1999, the symbol of Sigmar himself - the twin-tailed comet - had appeared in the sky. As midnight of the final day of the year approached, Daemons crept from the shadows and mingled with the throng, crying joyously and cavorting with man and woman alike. As the festival reached its zenith, the comet impacted upon the city. Only the Temple of Sigmar's Rock, home to the Sisterhood of Sigmar, remained unblemished. The city burned for weeks, the comet leaving the ruins of Mordheim covered in shards of solidified Chaos, soon to become known as wyrdstone. When Mordheim finally stopped burning, mercenary warbands from all over the Empire and beyond came in search of it, for it was said that wyrdstone can do anything; change your luck and fortune and turn lead into gold. Of course, Man was not the only race interested in wyrdstone, and many other creatures prowl the City of the Damned."
 Mordheim is a dark and evil place. The bands of your fellow ruthless treasure hunters are the least of your worries amid the cracked streets. Creatures from your darkest nightmares prowl the alleys and the air is poisonous.


Mordheim is a tabletop miniature skirmish game set in the Warhammer world. I have been constructing buildings to make a section of the city to be the battlefield when I play. I have also been collecting a decent number of odd models to represent the inhabitants of the city (although very few are actually painted). So anyway here are a couple pics of some of the stuff I have been working on.  

 The Gallows, for public execution.

 There is a Headsman's block as well.

 "Cheap Meat" stall. Some of the pork tastes very suspicious...

 Cheap Meat back view- large rat advancing on a human hand.

 The Row houses, not as complete as the meat stall but playable.

Row houses- interior/back view.

 Row house close up.

Wyrdstone counters (green sparkly nail-polish supplied by my pretty girlfriend).

So yeah, just some of the stuff I have been working on. I have a bunch of D&D type material in my head, I just need to get it up on here. I just started work last week, and have been composing lengthy blog posts in my head at work only to pass out as soon as I get home and forget to post them.  Also apparently Jack and Evan have been posting about familiars as well- here. They had a much more interesting and in-depth look at the topic but it is quite a coincidence that I did a post on familiars yesterday too.

Cheers gang and Happy Easter!!!

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Familiar Tables

Random tables for generating a familiar. Roll or simply choose. I suggest one roll on the animal table followed by one roll for either color or a special feature, but you could roll on all three if you want. Go nuts.This is really just meant to get the ball rolling.


Familiars

Animal
1- toad/frog
2- owl
3- rat
4- raven/crow
5-snake
6-rabbit
7-fox
8-hawk
9-bat
10-cat
11-lizard
12-ferret

Color
1-deep blue
2-green
3-golden
4-spotted crimson
5-glowing pink
6-rainbow

Feature
1-antlers
2-unicorn horn
3-sharp fangs
4-spikes
5-bat wings
6-strange eyes