A Plague On Both Your Houses

Work on expanding my Venice set up to a useable board for Carnevale continues with the addition of a second house, more street tiles and a couple of other surprises.

This printing lark is infectious.

The second house is from the same bundle of STL files I got from Hartolia Miniatures and is very much in the same style, only it's a single unit rather than two, and printed with a separate balcony, stepped porch and roofs.

I do like this building although scale issue with it being a little small is more noticeable than with the first house as the doors (which are the most telling feature) are much more visible.

Additionally, and frankly a bit weirdly, the fit of the parts was nowhere near as good and so gluing the piece together was much more awkward.

However, the balcony is a much more accessible feature than on the first model and the pitch of the roof is less precarious for models intent on attacking from on high.

I'm taking my lead on painting from the cardboard buildings that came in the starter box to try to capture the right feel, although I've gone for more pale grey than white on the stonework.

Additionally, I've done another four street tiles for it to sit on, which is causing Venice to expand and allowed me to start to add my MDF bridges to the set up.

As I was printing all of this. I came to the end of a roll of filament, and so, not wanting to waste it, I decided to print a barrel and a crate (found on the Bambu Handy App), which came out fine.

The top of the barrel was a bit plain, and so to add some visual interest I added a rat from one of the Frostgrave sprues I have knocking about.

The rat also added to a theme, given what else I printed.

This is a Plague Doctor I gained the files for from the Carnevale MyMiniFactory tribe. I wanted to experiment with whether my FDM printer should handle these files that were clearly designed for resin, and the answer was yes...to an extent.

There is a rather messy bit on the back of the cloak under the fold, and I cut off the lower part of the cane and replaced it (in fact I came close to replacing the whole hand). Also, the jack if a face and slightly ragged look helped out, along with the mainly black colour scheme.

However, the outcome was a pleasant surprise, especially as I'd had a bit of a disappointment with my subscription to the tribe.

On the MyMiniFactory page the November download included bases, which. In the advertising, look exactly like those I've been using. Obviously I thought this would be a great way to save money.

However, it turns out that the files are for bases that look nothing like those shown and I was a touch annoyed.

And yet, learning that I should be able to print at least some of the miniatures I get files for has softened me to this disappointmen, as has learning that the big building I got files for actually fits on my build plate.

I'm going to stick with the tribe as my version of Venice grows, but I'm going to keep a close eye on whether I feel like I'm getting value for money, which probably means at least two useable steps each month.

Acquired: -106

Painted: 513

Lead Mountain: 216

Night Terrors #2: Horror at the Drive In

After the first episode of the Night Terrors feature pack for 7TV, I was keen to get on with the second installment, and. As regular readers will be aware, made sure that I had everything I needed should the opportunity arise to get another game in.

Needless to say, the opportunity arose.

Whereas the first episode of alien artefacts and FBI cover ups was clearly inspired by films like E.T. and other 'kids on bikes' tales of youngsters in genuine peril from adult dangers, the second episode directly draws from the B-Movie horrors of the 1950s of the kind actually being shown at the drive in.

Strap in for an all out creature feature.

The story picks up with the captured alien being transported by Operation Blacklight to a secure location.

Unfortunately, as the motorcade passed the Moonlight Drive In, the aliens psychic emanations latch on to the heightened emotions of dating teens at an all night monster movie marathon, causing the celluloid horrors to crawl out of the screen to attack.

The terrified teens subjected to this attack were as follows:

Lisa Armstrong, straight A student (star)

Troy Bryers, high school quarterback (co-star)

Albert Jefferson, Drive-In manager (co-star)

Vincent Ash, rebel without a cause (extra)

Kimberley McKenna, Cheerleader leader (extra)

Lori Reynolds, outcast new girl (extra)

6 Teenage Moviegoers (extras)

Any resemblance to teen characters appearing in other sci-fi or monster related franchises is entirely due to the limits of my miniature collection.

The movie monsters would appear in each act as different films appeared on the silver screen and disgorged their villains into the drive in.

Human Fly (co-star)

3 Giant Flies (extras)

3 Giant Maggots (extras)

2 Clouds of Flies (extras)

Giant Ant Queen (co-star)

2 Giant Soldier Ants (extras)

3 Giant Worker Ants (extras)

A Gigantic Spider would be superimposed in layer during post-production through the use of specialist Finale cards.

ACT ONE - Frankenfly (1956)

Screams ring out across the drive-in as huge mutated flies and maggots start emerging from the screen, shortly followed by the movie's villain: the human-fly hybrid, Frankenfly.

Whilst some run in panic, and others fail to notice due to being 'otherwised engaged' in their cars, some of the teenage patrons are perplexed by the creatures, especially the human-fly hybrid, asking each other if it's just the janitor in a mask.

Meanwhile, as others stand dumbstruck, quick-thinking valedictorian and 'girl most likely to leave this dump of a town', Lisa, immediately realises that she needs to shut down the projector and rushes to the managers office to take action.

New girl, Lori, spots Lisa and, recognising someone with a plan, follows.

Over in the centre of the lot a furious melee erupts. Top jock, Troy, and bad boyy Concentrate in the thick of the action, whilst Kimberley back flips into the fight.

Lisa reaches Mr Jefferson who explains that she needs to use his keys to turn off the projector at the fusebox.

Lisa grabs the keys and runs. Seeing the weird new girl in front of her, she tosses the keys to her shouting extremely clear instructions in the manner that won her the inter-state debating competition. Twice.

Surprised to be even acknowledged, let alone included by the high and mighty Lisa Armstrong, Lori grabs the keys and runs, yanking open the fusebox and ripping out everything she can.

The image on the screen briefly flickers and dies, the mutant flies start to fade and a smug. Self-satisfied smile starts to form on Lisa's perfectly formed face until there's a whirring sound and the picture returns.

Mr Jefferson shouts, "it's the back up generator! Behind the diner!"

Realising they are fighting a losing battle, Vincent, Troy and several others behind to back away from the mutated flies. Unfortunately, Vincent's date, regretting being impressed by his leather jacket, falls behind and is literally swarmed to death.

Frustrated, Lisa spots that preening pom-pom (but admittedly athletic), Kimberley McKenna, and the very, very muscular (concentrate Lisa!) Troy heading for the diner and formulates a new plan.

"New girl. Lori, isn't it? Get the keys to the jocks. They'll move quicker than us."

ACT TWO - Atomic Mandible Massacre (1954)

As one horror come to an end, a new one begins, and giant ants begin to scuttle out of the screen.

More teenagers succumb to the swarm whilst Vincent, wielding his dad's gun, starts popping slow moving maggots.

Having took instructions surprisingly well from the weird new girl, Kimberley flips into action, taking the keys as fast as she can to the generator.

Always able to read a play, Troy sees what is happening and acknowledging that he's not currently calling the shots, and goes long behind the diner.

Back in the car park 'Troy's date' (that's all she's credited as) is overwhelmed by the mutated flies.

However, as the creatures devour the unfortunate spandex-clad eye-candy, the are distracted long enough for Vincent to squeeze off two shots, blowing the head of the hybrid apart.

Nevertheless, the Ant Queen and her brood. Acting with inhuman intelligence, we're already on the move.

Lisa finds herself beset by swarms of flies but fends them off with clever use of her hairspray and a lighter.

In case anyone asks, she found the lighter on the floor. It definitely wasn't hers, mom.

After turning off the back-up generator only to find that the monsters were still coming, Troy goes into hero mode, grabs the keys off Kimberley and makes a run for the fuel store. Intent on burning the screen.

However, he runs straight into an ambush laid by the Ant Queen, almost as if she knew what he would do.

Suddenly, a cartwheeling vision in red somersaults into the fray, stamping on the head of one ant and cheering, as she had done many times before for Troy to go all the way (at least that was the rumour).

With well practiced skill, Troy slipped his guard and made a dash for the end zone...erm...I mesn fuel store.

ACT THREE - Night of the Death Weaver (1958)

The film now changes again, the screen lit by an ethereal light not emanating from the projection tower and massive spider's legs behind to emerge.

Even the ants and flies briefly stop to stare in horror.

But not the malevolent malice of the Ant Queen, who chases Troy down like a six-limbed linebacker and dragging him down, the keys sent sprawling into the long grass.

The girls find themselves cornered, but rather than falling into helpless despair as the femme fatales in the movies, the spirit of sisterhood kicks in and they employ every means at their disposal (sarcasm, hair flicks, side-eye, cutting insults and death stares) to kick some ant ass.

But the Queen's rampage continues and as Kimberley and Lori fall, Lisa finds herself as literally the final girl and prepares to fight for her life.

But suddenly, the creatures all around her begin to shimmer and fade. Unbeknownst to Lisa the cause of these horrid events has moved out of range, saving her and a few others, but taking the horror on to a new location.

A distraught Lisa limps over to her new friends and checks to see in they are still breathing.

Roll credits.

***

That was a really fun and engaging game. The asymmetric objectives made for a fun challenge and although I'm not entirely sure that completing the task of reaching four objectives and burning the screen is doable in only seven turns, the final result was very close, with only a point in it.

I liked the staggered arrival of enemies themed to different films and handling the spider through finale cards was clever.

The next episode sees us rejoining Teddy Tucker as he makes it to his school where the roleplaying club are for some reason still there after midnight and things take a decidedly fantastical turn.

The Land That I Forgot

Some years ago, I engaged in a solo campaign following the events of the Marvel New Avengers comic books using a range of co-opted and converted miniatures (along with several of the better Heroclix sculpts).

The adventure saw the heroes join forces to prevent a supervillain prison break, before heading off to the Savage Land, where they encountered several dinosaurs and...nothing happened...

...until now!

Basically, the next stage of the story would have seen the Avengers ambushed by the Savage Land Mutates, but I just didn't have the appropriate miniatures.

In theory, I could have used a motley collection of beastmen and mutants, but the Mutates are a specific collection of characters and I wanted to do them justice.

Fast forward to the last few weeks and I found myself painting my Danger 5 miniatures from Crooked Dice and watching the first series again when I was reminded that the model I'd bought to represent one of the Mutates could easily pull double duty as a Danger 5 villain.

That character was Sauron.

No, not that one. This one.

Sauron is a mutant with the power to absorb the life force of others by touch, but if he absorbs mutant energy, he turns into a pterodactyl.

If this seems a silly idea, that's because it is. It's so silly that the only other time I've seen a pterodactyl-man is in Danger 5, the silliest TV show in existence.

The model is a Heroclix sculpt which took very little effort to paint, and only a small amount of boiling water to get the wings in shape.

I used another Heroclix model for the wolf man mutate Lupo. The model is actually a DC villain called Hyena, rebased and repainted grey.

Technically, Lupo seems to have some sort of white hood around his head (making him look like a panda) and white briefs (which looks like a nappy) in many images, however, not in all of them and that's enough for me. The original design for Lupo actually had him just as a barbarian type with big hair and fangs.

The final member of this trio of terror is the imaginatively named Amphibius (presumably because he's amphibious), a frog-like mutate.

The model I've used is a rather ropey Kuo-Toa from the D&D Miniatures Game by WizKids. It's spear also needed hot water to bend it into shape, and the model needed flash trimming.

Not a great result. But more than enough for my purposes.

These were more a mini project to do whilst I was printing the next house for my Venice board and I've no idea if I'll return to my campaign. But I am tempted to see if I can cobble together a few more of the Savage Land Mutates.

Acquired: -113

Painted: 506

Lead Mountain: 216

Little Venice

I mentioned in my previous post that I'd made the decision to put together a proper board for Carnevale and I've been making some headway.

I've managed to put together enough terrain to fill a single 12"x12" tile and it gives an indication of just how much I'm going to need to do to fill a 3'x3' board.

Admittedly, not ever part of the board needs to be full of buildings, and I am planning for at least one tile to be open water with only jetties, piers and boats allowing passage, but I do have a job ahead of me.

First up is the building itself which is a paid for STL from a company called Hartolia Miniatures that I accessed through Cults 3d, but they are on other platforms.

This printed up really well with only a couple of minor issues: I ended up with a couple of broken pillars (you can see if you look closely) which could have been prevented if I'd added brims for stability.

 Additionally, I could probably have done with scaling the print up a touch to allow 30mm bases to stand on the balcony. Finally, the pitch of the roof is a little steep for Carnevale, but blutack and varnish will fix that.

For painting I relied on contrast and sponging. I may revisit it with a dryer sh, but I never really want the terrain to be the star, so I probably won't.

The street tiles come from the Carnevale MyMiniFactory tribe and are really functional and fast to paint.

I'm not rushing to print an paint all of the tiles that I need as I suspect some other styles and shapes will be released in time.

For now, I am going to print one building at a time and just print enough tiles to support them, meaning that I can adapt as my city grows.

Finally, I've added another proxy model to my Vatcan force, which is currently unplayable due to having too many heroes.

This is a Heroclix model of Spoiler from the Batman comics, a model which I owned three of. One got added to my Batman Miniatures Game collection, a second ended up in my Freedom Force project and this one got drafted into a Guildball proxy team.

A bit of a paintwork tidy up, a new base and a splash of purple and gold did the job of bringing her into the Vatican as a Redemptionist (a fanatical member of the ominously named Knights of Silence). She actually looks more like an Inquisitorial Agent, but I didn't have a hand crossbow to give her.

I've now started on printing my second building, which will be a touch smaller, but I'm looking forward to how this develops.

Acquired: -113

Painted: -503

Lead Mountain: 219

Femme Fatales

The last week or so of painting Crooked Dice miniatures has reminded me just how much I enjoy working with their clean, uncomplicated and characterful sculpts.

Sadly, this enthusiasm and enjoyment has led me to the very last unpainted Crooked Dice miniatures that I currently own.

These two dangerous ladies were acquired as part of the 7TV Heroes and Villain Kickstarter. I bought the villains pack and had plans for several of the miniatures which have been used in Freedom Force, and general pulpy/culty ways.

A lack of a plan and a failure to make decisions has kept these two ladies on the shelf far too long.

The Degenerate Monarch is clearly based on Ursula Andress' character in the 1965 film She, the immortal ruler of an ancient civilization.

Of all the miniatures I've bought, I've had the least idea of what to do with this one and so I decided to simply base my paint job on the costume worn in the movie - hence the odd combo of black, brown, grey and gold.

I'm happy with how she came out, but I still don't know what I'll use her for.

It's not strictly true to say that I didn't know what to do with this model, the Femme Fatale. She could easily have joined my pulp gangsters, she would make a good River Song in Doctor Who, could easily have joined any number of Batman villains as their moll, and I even thought about a red dress with purple gloves to make her look like Jessica Rabbit.

What kept her unpainted was indecision about the colours to use. 

However, painting up Danger 5 has prompted me to put her in black and red, similar to the Nazi girls in the series. Admittedly, the outfits are different, but she at least fits the aesthetic and can easily join the villain cast, whilst still being useable for other projects easily enough.

In addition, I've recently joined the new Carnevale Tribe on MyMiniFactory to get my hands on some STLs for the game.

Although I suspect most, if not all, the miniatures are unlikely to work on my FDM printer, I was keen to get my hands on the files for Venetian streets, as I am starting on building a proper board for the game.

I can only print one tile at a time but my first prints turned out well and they paint up quickly and easily enough, and so I'm now setting about manufacturing enough for a 3'x3' board.

I suspect that down the line there will be some variant street tiles, so I'm not going to rush to get the entire board done in the first month.

Acquired: -114

Painted: 496

Lead Mountain: 225

Victory Has A New Name

Good morning boys and girls, we have orders...

The allies are losing the war due to an overabundance of Diamond Girls, Dinosaur Men, gold-plated tanks and Kill Men of the Rising Sun.

We need a team to handle all of this, find out where our missing monuments are, investigate a brothel in Switzerland and, as always, kill Hitler.

We need DANGER 5.

If you've never watched Danger 5, everything in this blog post is going make absolutely zero sense.

If you have watched Danger 5, you'll know what I'm talking about, but it still makes zero sense.

Danger 5 is an absurd Australian TV show that features a crack team of allied agents in World War 2, but the aesthetics are of a low budget sixties spy show.

It combines this with a frankly surreal set of storylines, bizarre characters and a metric ton of visual gags. It is quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever seen.

And it's brilliant.

I've had the miniature set from Crooked Dice for a long time, but have never got round to painting them. I'm really not sure why it's taken this long.

Let's meet the team...

Tucker is the mild-mannered, straight-laced and frankly upright 'leader' of the team. He enjoys a sensible chuckle, suffers nosebleeds in the presence of freeform jazz and is deeply smitten with Claire (but too repressed to do anything about it).

Claire is the cool, calm and collected blond bombshell whose virginal charm makes her an object of desire for pretty much everyone, especially the Führer. She clearly has a brain as well as beauty, something which deeply upsets her commanding officer.

Jackson is a hard-drinking, hard-hitting all-American hero. He's prone to flying into a rage about everything from losing a staring contest to threats to Lady Liberty herself. He is most insensed by his complicated feelings for teammate Ilsa.

Pierre is a smooth Frenchman with a past and he usually knows someone in every location the team is sent to. He is an artistic soul with a ear for cool beats and is always ready to hear a dying friend regain him with a perfect cocktail recipe.

Ilsa is a sultry and volatile Russian agent who enjoys driving men wild, especially Jackson, even though she's married to Rommel. Ilsa has very little time for Claire's unwillingness to sleep with Nazis to complete a mission.

In addition to the main team, the set also includes their commanding officer, Colonel Chestbridge. It's never explained why he has a eagle's head, as he doesn't take kindly to being questioned, especially by Claire.

Obviously, every mission always includes the objective to kill Hitler, and so the Führer is included in the set too. As the mastermind behind every fiendish plot, killing him is the hey to winning the war. Unfortunately, his uncanny ability to dive through a window to escape regularly goild the team.

Finally, we have Blondi, Hitler's Dog...or is it? Could it actually be a robotic agent sent to seduce German Shepards on guard?

Yes. The dog is smoking.

Getting these painted has prompted my to watch the first series again, and it's still just as ridiculous. For me, Danger 5 perfectly captures what happens in 7TV when two players haven't agreed what casts they are bringing.

It's bonkers.

Acquired: -116

Painted: 493

Lead Mountain: 226