I have been eyeing The Drowned Earth for a while. To be honest though, that is true for a lot of games. 😉 I have not jumped in yet, but I did get the chance to paint one model of their range, the joyful hippo man Mattiu. It was given to me by Mac, one of the host of the Indie Invasion podcast, which I recommend if you enjoy indie games and a positive view of the hobby.
The game setting is cool, the miniatures are superb, and when you add the amazing boards full of colourful jungles and DINOSAURS(!), it’s hard not to be interested.
Well, I had good intentions at the start of the year, but I might have set my release pace a tad high, and found it hard to publish weekly. When you combine that with a dip into console gaming (Zelda’s Breath of the Wild on Switch) and general hobby slowdown, it partly explains the last few months of silence. It’s not that I haven’t done any, but nothing really meaningful, a lot of cleaning and sorting, and also quite a lot of prepping models. I’ll try and go back to post some of the stuff from the gap, but there isn’t that much to show, so it won’t take long.
What got me painting again, though, was the possibility of a game of Anyaral, the World of Twilight. We’ve already played the first book scenario with my friend Paul earlier this year, and we had a chance to play the second one this weekend. This was all I needed to paint the last few models I was missing for it, and off I went with the airbrush and palette!
Our group is having an Arena Rex meetup sometime next month. I already have enough models to play, but I bought another one last year in a group order. It seemed like the perfect incentive to put brush to miniature and get back to fully painted!
The model is question is Aemilia, from Roman Imperial Ludus Britannicus, also known as Legio XIII. She’s the daughter of an aristocrat that wanted nothing of that dull life, and decided to test her skills in the arena instead.
After painting the core models from the starter, painting the voices to lead them, and making custom bases, it was time to round out the villains team. I needed a Support model, and while I have other indie supports, I got them in trade and they were previously painted. Instead of going through the steps to strip them, I decided to go with the cyber entity called Vector, a neutral character. After that, it was less of a decision on the game role, and more what cool other models I had. I needed a 1-level model to have a full 12-level line-up. The second model from Vector’s set was Kitty Cheshire, the stranger from the Other Side. I might as well paint her to complete the duo, as they were the very first models I ever bought for the game. It was about time I got some colour on them.
Cro Mag original art, by Pulp Monster
This gave me a whole team worth of Supremes. However, it was missing the single most important piece I consider in any Pulp City game: a model that interacts with terrain, either by throwing it, or slamming it into opponents in melee! In came the giant cave man, Cro Mag. The only thing left at that point was to add some Minions, as 100 Voices painted last week could bring some with him. Looking at my collection of henchmen, the cool little dino Mutant Mobsters were the obvious choice.
This week was my birthday. We had a fun family night, with good food and a new boardgame with the kids, the incredibly cute Flamecraft. It was a good time. IÂ recommend trying the game if you like simpler euros, and my daughter, who loves cute things and dragons, gives it a big thumbs up too.
Birthdays often go hand in hand with gifts. For hobbyist, they sometime relate to the hobby. One such gift my sweet wife once gave me is the huge Pirate Giant from Black Scorpion Miniatures. It is an impressive piece, and I dreaded painting it and not doing it justice, so I postponed the project. Well, after more than a decade, I took the plunge around the same time last year and put the brush to it. So lets look back!
To direct the merry band of Pulp Cityvillains I started last month, I needed a Leader. Luckily, I’ve been able to get my hand on 100 Voices and his Voicelings recently, after trying to find them for years. As an indie Leader, he’s a perfect match for my rag tag group of criminals. And his henchmen just work so well with him, both thematically and in game, that I had to paint them together.
I started tracking my painting and my playing about 6 years ago. I don’t track wins, or much other info, mainly just the games and who I played with. I find it interesting, and it gives me pointers to what I should get to the table again. Looking at the file, the only game I played every of those years is Pulp City. That is only fitting for my favourite game.
Late last year, I decided to expand my options, as my only painted models were for the A.R.C. faction (the Ape Revolution Committee), and some civilians for the scenarios. I decided to start by painting the indie models from the two alignment starters. I did paint Tekkna for the heroes, but to change things up, I followed that with the villains. I got 2 of them painted before the new year, Aurelius and Anansi, but without their bases though.
Back in 2019, when I was still posting semi-regularly, I got into a terrain challenge, and I even published a couple entries I made, a ruined temple and a cabbage farm. The first piece that I made but I didn’t get to share was for the game Anyaral, the world of Twilight. It’s for the Casanii faction, for which I don’t even have a force, but I felt inspired by their look and theme.
I don’t remember the exact prompt we had to build toward, but it was quite simple, something like “building”. I made multiple sketches to make a small village, but the piece for the challenge was a single large dwelling. I don’t have all my pictures from back then, but I’ve gathered some I had not erased, or that I had published on Twitter.
Our group got into Bushido just at the start of the pandemic. It limited our playing capabilities, but offered us time to get our models painted, at least. I painted my whole first faction, the Open Rebellion box, before even having a game, which is kind of new for me. Since then, I got in a new sub-faction, the butos of the Silvermoon Trading Syndicate, a kind of yakuza-like crime group. I got those painted in the last few weeks, and I’m quite pleased with them, especially with the challenge of the tattoo work.
My Ruined forest temple last month ended up winning the judges’ votes 3 to 2, and moved forward to this month’s round. It was really close based on the judges’ commentaries, and could have gone both ways. That’s always nice in a friendly competition. It was also great to have the opportunity to read judges’ notes!
For October, my imposed theme was “farm“. I struggled with that theme more than the previous months. One personal goal I gave myself was to make terrain that I could use in games, and nothing was really coming to mind early on. Eventually, after painting Laios, I went through my shelf of games again, and a bright light popped up. I would build a rabbit-run cabbage farm for Burrows and Badgers! That would be a good incentive to finally work on those minis.
The game setting is cool, the miniatures are superb, and when you add the amazing boards full of colourful jungles and DINOSAURS(!), it’s hard not to be interested.
