Monday 27 November 2017

More generic sci-fi scenery, but this time because Necromunda

Before we get into this week's post, another apology. It's a big sorry to anyone who visits this blog looking to see models from the Warhammer 40,000 universe (or maybe Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Age of Sigmar). If you've flicked through my last few posts it won't have escaped your notice that things have not been very miniatures-focussed of late.

This is for all the usual reasons, plus a few unusual ones. But essentially it goes like this: really busy, blah, blah, stuff to do on house, blah, blah, looking after the kids, blah, blah, sorting out my career, blah blah, watching Star Trek Discovery and Stranger Things on Netflix, woo hoo.

If you do occasionally visit this blog you may be aware I've been going on about creating a section of an Imperial Hive City. One that I call Kruenta Karoliina Arx Rotunda, on the planet Ancora Fornax, or just Kru for short. You may also know that although I've built civilians, servitors, vehicles, tools, and robots for Kru, I haven't actually managed to finish a single building yet. But that's not to say I haven't started any. A while back I posted some work-in-progress pics of my first piece of terrain – a cobbled together industrial storage depot of some kind. I made much of it using some classic techniques published in an old White Dwarf. There should be some further development on this building in the near future, but in the meantime I've also been working on a second one. It's a Biocidic Filtration Tower, an installation likely to be found alongside storage tanks on Imperial worlds with similar industries to Ancora Fornax.

But more importantly than that, it's a tall open building with platforms, gantries, walkways, and ladders that should be useful in miniature-based wargames, especially the brand new re-release of Necromunda.

It's not quite finished yet, but I think these pictures give a pretty good idea of where I'm going with it.




Thursday 16 November 2017

A Quiz of Thrones

This is another one of those posts where I have to start with an apology because I was meant to publish it a long time ago.

As usual, one thing led to another, and instead of getting this done, I ended up reinforcing the notion that I'm a lazy, slack-jawed slob, stuck miles behind the times, clinging on by the skin of my teeth, desperately playing catch-up, without a hope of ever meeting any real deadlines.

As it turns out, it's a statement that is so accurate it's like a window onto my very essence. So much for internet anonymity.

Anyway this should have been posted before the seventh season of Game of Thrones aired on HBO and Sky Atlantic during the summer, because it's kind of a refresher quiz I wrote for some friends who were hosting a small party to celebrate the first episode.

This means that some of the answers might have since gone out of date, become too obvious, or even changed altogether. And that's basically my way of saying that if any Game of Thrones experts find some horribly blatant errors in my answers, then it just wasn't my fault, guv'nor.

I've misplaced the digital file that has all the questions on it (in live type), but I still have the following photos. And with a little luck everything on them should be just about legible. (EDIT: I've found the file and the more legible questions can now be found here.)


The folded A3 sheet was designed for the quizmaster (me) to read from, so it had all the answers printed directly below the questions (because my memory is about as reliable as Little Finger's word). Therefore for the sake of anyone who might be interested in reading the questions first, I've crudely redacted all the answers on the first couple of photos.



The eagle-eyed among you (or perhaps raven-eyed) may have noticed that round two, question 13 suggests you look at some cards. These are shown below. Simply narrow down the blue cards till you are left with the six correct dire wolf names, then match each wolf to its correct Stark master (as shown on the red cards). Twelve points if you get everything right.

A word of warning, no-one who has ever played this round has got all twelve points.


And then here are the questions again, but this time without me censoring the answers. Please tell me they are not too small to read.* It's probably not much fun if you've forgotten your glasses. You'll notice there are some additional questions and answers at the end. These were included on the off-chance that people were really enjoying the quiz and didn't want it to end. Kind of like a standing ovation for the quiz... And me... If only.




 *If you can't make out the answers, and want to know what it says, just leave a comment below and I'll get back to you.