Monday 7 January 2013

On the Workbench: Ral Partha Djinn & Efreet Pt 2

A while back I posted some photos of a couple of old Ral Partha D&D miniatures that had made their way on to the workbench.  Sadly I managed to break the Efreet's scimitar in half, either because I'm immensely strong/ham-fisted or more likely because tin/lead alloy becomes quite brittle with age.

Well I'm glad to say he's on the mend as I cobbled together a new sword out of an old credit card and some wire from a mousetrap (who would've thunk it).

Efreet with new plastic sword of +5 Elemental Awesomeness
I know the sword is a bit on the ridiculous size, but what the heck if he's an Elemental and so's his sword!!  It also reminds me a lot of Voss's character mini (Magmar Teufel Schlager) in the RPG romcom Unicorn City.  Which incidentally is currently playing on Netflix.

Magmar Teufel Schlager (please correct me if I got this wrong)

Tune in later for an update on the painting of both the Djinn and Efreet miniatures.

Friday 4 January 2013

2012 Movies

Last year I posted my movie list for 2013 for the first time and I did get round to seeing the majority of them.   

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Underworld Awakening - A welcome update and return to form for the Underworld franchise after a frankly pitiful 3rd film.  I really do like Len Wiseman's dark modern world view of the eternal struggle between the warring clans of Vampires and Werewolves and his missus, Kate Beckinsale, always puts on a good show as the lycra clad Selene.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island - Despite the cast this was a nicely put together amalgum of Vernian adventure, far superior in my view than a lot of the turgid TV movies we've had over the last few years.  It reminded me of those happy Sunday afternoons I spent watching Doug McClure battling prehistoric monsters in The Land that Time Forgot and Lionel Jeffries in his bid to become The First Men in the Moon.

John Carter
- An awesome film let down by a terrible PR campaign making it the biggest box office flop of the year (until Battleship).  If you haven't seen this movie, buy the DVD you will not be disappointed.  Andrew Stanton really deserves credit for bringing Edgar Rice Burroughs hero to a new generation in such an epic way.

John Carter fights two Barsoomian white apes
John Carter fights two Barsoomian white apes

Iron Sky - The hype which preceded this Sci-Fi Nazi comedy was too much for the film to live up to in the end, but there were some really great visual and comedic moments.  How many films have ever seen which feature gigantic space zeppelins discourging Nazi UFOs?

Looper - A really enjoyable dystopian sci-fi movie and probably my favourite film of year, not perfect by any means but a neat idea well executed.  The star of the film had to be Pierce Gagnon who played the supercute but scary Cid and totally stole the show from Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt whenever he appeared on screen.  I loved the cobbled together tech vision of the near future in particular the café racer inspired jet engined hover bikes.

THE LOWLIGHTS

Prometheus - Ridley Scott's confused Alien prequel (or is it?) could not live up to expectations and I suspect that he shot an amazing film but it just ended up on the cutting room floor.  It was beautiful in every respect other than story so let's hope Prometheus 2 explains what the hell is going on.

Dredd - Although I loved the grim gritty reality of Dredd's interiors, it just failed abysmally to capture the Mega-City I know and love, t was just so flat and 2 dimensional.  Where was the hover  traffic, the suspended train line or the high-level megways which bind the blocks together?  I appreciate that this was most likely a plot device, let's face it you can hardly trap Dredd in a tower block if you have ready access to H-wagons.  It's what results when you rehash the basic premise of the vastly superior Gareth Evans directed martial-arts movie The Raid: Redemption.

Don't get me wrong it's not entirely worthless, it just wasn't as visually rewarding as I expected... damn you expectations!

Total Recall - Although it was a smörgåsbord of cyberpunk visual effects,  the rehashed storyline was a confused mess stemming from the brave but flawed decision to set it on Earth.  For example, if you had the technology to build an advanced security android why would you then bus thousands of migrant workers through the center of the Earth every day as a sweat-shop labor force to assemble them?  Would you not just have machines which made them?  To then ship them back to the other side of the planet as an invasion force, it just didn't make any sense. 

All human history points towards conquest being driven by the avaliability and exploitation of natural resources.  I'm sure if any of the bean counters had gotten wind of Cohaagen's plan they would have just told him to offshore production to the Colony ready for the invasion at a later date. 

Eclipsing the 90's Paul Verhoeven version was always going to be a tall order, and the film contains some excellent and worthwhile homages, but in this version you never got the feeling that you knew which version of reality Quaid/Hauser was experiencing.      

THE SLEEPERS

There were a few movies I caught this year whose PR managed to totally evaded my consciousness but I enjoyed enough to recommend:

Cockneys vs Zombies - An ensemble cast kicking zombie butt in London's East End and perfect inspiration for a game of Fiasco using the cockney London.

Grabbers - An Irish monster movie in the style of Tremors for which I wrote an earlier more in-depth post.

Headhunters - A gritty Norwegian crime thriller originally penned by Jo Nesbo with more twists in it than a pair of iphone headphones.  Like 2009's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo it has some brief nausea inducing moments in it that are not recommended for those with weak stomachs but the cast, including the very talented Aksel Hennie and Game of Thrones star Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, are convincing giving you a real sense of jeopardy throughout.

Aksel Hennie gets trapped in the privy in Headhunters
 

Coming soon... The 2013 Movie List






  



Thursday 3 January 2013

2012 in Review and Some New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year to one and all. 

It's been a while since my last post here and I'd love to say it's because I've been busy creating new and interesting stuff or that my personal life has been one hectic social engagement after another, but I can't.  So in the spirit of New Year I intend to make some changes round here, but first we need to review 2012.

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In 2012 I wrote a total of 45 posts (which is pitiful really), and half that of 2011.  Some of this I put down to the shift in my viewing/posting habits from blogs to Google+, but to be honest I've just been so distracted.  New Years Resolution #1  is to go back to Writing at least 2 posts a week.

RGP Logo
Roleplay Geek Publishing 

I managed to publish only 1 additional product this year, bringing the catalogue to a total of 8 products.  In order of popularity these are:
Therefore New Years Resolution #2 is to get some of the things I've been working on out of the pending tray and into the catalogue.
 
Google+

Has become one of the most important sources of gamer news for me over the last 12 months and I see this continuing for the forseeable future.  The addition of communities has also seen an explosion of new contacts in the last few months and has resulted my eye being off the blogosphere.  New Years Resolution #3 is therefore to get my digital channels into some sort of order. 

Gaming Highlights

Fiasco
This years Dragonmeet was my only convention, and I've never seen it so busy.  I don't know if this marks a resurgence in interest in RPGs in the UK or as a reaction to the current economic slowdown, but you could barely move in the tradehalls.  It did give me the chance to play Fiasco for the first time and I absolutely loved it, rushing straight down to the trade hall to snap up my copy.  A big thanks to Fiasco's designer Jason Morningstar and the rest of the Google+ Fiasco community for making this my RPG of the year. 

I first saw Fiasco on Wil Wheaton's excellent boardgaming web TV show Tabletop which has become de rigueur viewing over the last 12 months.  If you like boardgames and haven't seen the show, you're missing out.  If there are any Game Publisher's listening, you need to help Wil and the Geek & Sundry Team to get this show renewed for another season.  I know it's responsible for me buying and recommending featured games as a result of watching.

Saturday 22 September 2012

More D&D Comicstrip Adverts from the 80s

As I discussed in my earlier post, I've been re-reading 2000AD in anticipation of seeing the new Judge Dredd movie and I uncovered some adverts from the TSR UK days back in the 80s

Here are some more comic strip adverts which I've unearthed from 1986 spanning progs 486 to 494. 
Episode 1 - Village of the Dead (Prog 486)
Episode 1 - Village of the Dead (Prog 486)
Episode 2 - The Battle (Prog 487)
Episode 2 - The Battle (Prog 487)
Episode 3 - The Swamp Creature (Prog 488)
Episode 3 - The Swamp Creature (Prog 488)
Episode 4 - Into the Tower (Prog 492)
Episode 4 - Into the Tower (Prog 492)
Episode 5 - Death and Wizardry (Prog 493)
Episode 5 - Death and Wizardry (Prog 493)
Episode 6 - The Final Enemy (Prog 494)

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Dr. Doom's Mark VI Hoberman Chassis - SPOILER

In episode 3 of the new Ultimate Spider-man series, spidey and the rest of the gang lure what they think is Dr Doom onto the SHIELD Hellicarrier only to discover that it is in fact a Mark VI Hoberman Chassis (aka a Matroyshka Doom Bot).  I particularly liked the foetal position each bot is in as it deploys from its parent bot.

The Mark VI Hoberman Chassis (aka Dr. Doom's Matroyshka Doom Bots)
The Mark VI Hoberman Chassis (aka Dr. Doom's Matroyshka Doom Bots)

This is a pretty cool idea for a robot and makes a change from the now clichéd transforming or combining robots.  Despite it's cool factor, it does have it's drawbacks in that a 1ft high Doom Bot doesn't represent much of a challenge for a superhero.

Some creative type should definitely come up with a stat block for this puppy.