OMG Another 5 Starblazer Comics

 

Yet more issues from my growing Starblazer collection

Starblazer #209 - The Ring of Gofannon - Through a nightmare of sorcery, Goll and his servant, Cutter follow the ancient maps of Gofannon in search of the legendary Ring.  Goll the warrior has to pit his fighting skills against all manner of unworldly creatures to merely survive and discover the truth.

Like every fantasy epic the ring of Gofannon is an archetypal quest to retrieve a magic ring and defeat a great evil descending upon the land.

Goll and Cutter must one by one overcome the trials and obstacles in their journey to find the legendary ring.  However, like every good Starblazer story there lies a twist in the tale, something unexpected which turns the story on its head.

The art for this story is great, simple when it needs to be and detailed when it needs to evoke a dense and rich background.  Very enjoyable and full of great one shot ideas for my own fantasy RPG stories. 

The cover art for this issue is a little bit uninspired.  However, this is what a fantasy story would look like if Sylvester Stallone was cast in the title role.

Starblazer #210 - Dragon Slayer - In a land overrun by evil, only one young boy had the courage and faith to seek out the warrior who could free the country from its sorcerous shadows - Dragon Slayer.., and he was 200 years old.

Another fantasy story, we must have hit the Conan the Barbarian vein in these recent issues.  The evil sorceror Drax has risen up and despite his magic waning he has enslaved the last of the Dragons Gorath to be his ultimate weapon and rule Pira IV unchallenged.

One brave villager and his son go against the wishes of the rest and vow to track down the legendary Dragonslayer who can free them from this cruel fate.  Sadly the villager is trapped by Drax and his son Bix must find the dragonslayer alone.

As ever we expect the Starblazer plot twist at the third act and this story doesn't dissapoint.  The final confrontation between Drax and the young lad Bix is a desperate but rewarding one.  The character of Bix is a shameless attempt at inserting the typical young reader into the story and it is very effective.  

I particularly liked the addition of the 6 legged scorpion tailed one eyed mini beholder creature which I will endeavour to write up a stat block for Savage Worlds and I will now forever call it a QERK!

Starblazer #211 - The Dream Machine - Kayn's the name, and finding people is my game.  Actually, I'm a private investigator, but I spent most of my trime trying to find enough creds to pay the rent.  Then one day I got a request for help... from a guy who'd been dead five years!

Kayn is back in another mystery chase murder story.  Futuristic Moscow is such an off choice for a setting.  I guess it's so that you can get away with simple brutalist architecture and a unbendening robotic state aparatus.  

Needles to say our hero Kayn is completely oblivious to the machinations of the secretive villain in this story.  He learns everything piece by piece at the same time as you read every frame.

Definitely a comic of its time with a run of the mill Starblazer storyline which is not all bad but very average. 

Starblazer #212 - Rogue Cop - Renko was a patrolman in a society diseased by corruption.  When this corruption touched him, he turned rogue to bring the offenders to justice.  But society doesn't like rogue cops and Renko was hounded to the edge of oblivion.

I was expecting a Robocop knock off but what I got was an interstellar crime wave and a man rescued from the brink of death by Space Brocolli!!

This is quite a fun little story, a classic tale of copy who goes rogue to bring down the big crime boss.  With no backup his luck runs out and he is stranded in the void with no hope so he decides to end it all by setting his ship to self destruct... as you do.

Saved by the benevolent space brocolli the Shreel, they turn him into a cyborg monster sending Renko into a depressive tailspin.  Howver, vengeance is a powerful emotion and Renko uses it to gain control of his new robotic body and take the fight to Hengis Furgaar to destroy his criminal emire once and for all.

Starblazer #213 - Skarr The Soldier - Stranded in Samek, many thousands of miles from his home, Skarr, the soldier of fortune, had to fight for a foreign ruler and an alien cause - or be executed!

This is a fairly stock story of a man caught between two factions waging a war at all costs.  There is not much exposition only action and it really does seem like an exercise in getting as many wild character illustrations on a page as possible.

This a treat from the fine pen of  Enrique Alcatena with an epic cover from the legend Ian Kennedy.

The character art is wild from the weird almost Napoleonic uniforms of the Margolian army to the down right bizarre mix of kimono clad Tarcils and the mask wearing denizens of Hetamec.  

This is my first Skarr story and I am encouraged to find the others.  

Whilst the plot does not offer much for the Roleplayer or DM, the artwork is a smorgasbord of inspiration.

Essential Starblazer Links

The Starblazer Checklist is a fantastic resource if you are collecting or want to know who wrote and illustrated each issue.

Many thanks to the chaps who run the Starblazer Covers archive, this is immensely useful resource when looking at ebay joblot listings.

Retro Sanctuary has a great article covering his top 20 Starblazer Issues which is worth a look and I'm looking forward to reading and reviewing some of these classics in the very near future.

 

Mega City Block Upgrade - The Okey Dokey Chef

Once you start pimping out your Mega City One Block Storage Case it's hard to know when to stop...

The Okey Dokey Chef Animated Sign

I wanted my sign to be an advertising hoarding and one of the most famous signs in Mega City One is the Okey Dokey Chef as featured in the Supersurf 7 race story Midnight Surfer (progs 424-429).  I was also inspired by the famous Vegas Vic neon sign whose arm waving welcomed gamblers from all around the globe since 1951.

He wold make an excellent starting point to learn about how to control low voltage RC servos with Arduino.

The Chef

I found a nice piece of clipart online which had the vibe I was going for and imported this into GIMP for editing.  

I cut out the "Chef's Kiss" hand using the lasso tool and moved this over into  a seperate file.  This is going to be the sweeping hand which we will animate later using a servo.

I added a speech bubble with some appropriate text coming out of the side of the chef's head. 

Preparing for Tinkercad

I have learned that Tinkercad is a pretty simplistic modelling tool and it does not particular like creating complex curved or polygonal shapes.  The easiest way to solve this conundrum is to simply create a solid black mask version of your line drawn artwork.  This can be used as a background and because both shapes are exactly the same image size, they will register perfectly together when you import them into Tinkercad.

When I was happy with both files, I and exported them (and their solid black mask counterparts) as a PNG then converted into an SVG using convertio.com.  Each line drawn SVG is imported into Tinkercad for extrusion into a 3D object using the same technique I used to create my badges and Index Card RPG Card Back Stamps. I use an extrusion height of 30mm.

The black mask variant is then imported and the combined shapes exported as a single STL.  This gives me an STL file for the chef and a file for the arm which can be printed on the Anycubic Photon M5.

The Electronics

The core of this project is an Arduino nano.  These little boards are stupidly cheap and really easy to start your coding adventure.  Seriously, if an idiot like me can do it then anyone can.

The bit doing all of the moving is a 9g 5v 180 degree hobby servo which I bought in a twinpack from Ali Express for £1.79.

This was superglued across the gap between the Speech bubble and the chef's arm.

The Wiring and Code

I used the excellent How to Control Servo Motors tutorial on the makerguides website.  The servo has 3 wires Red (5v Power) goes to the 5v pin,  Brown (Ground) goes to the GND pin and the Yellow (Signal) goes to Pin 9.

The code example given is perfect for my purposes, but I did need to customise the start and end positions for the hand as it does not need to run the full 180 that the servo is capable of.  I also added a 500 millisecond delay at the end of each travel.

#include 

Servo myServo;  // Create a Servo object

void setup() {
  myServo.attach(9);  // Attach the servo to pin D9
}

void loop() {
  // Move from 30 to 135 degrees
  for (int pos = 30; pos <= 135; pos += 1) {
    myServo.write(pos);  // Tell servo to go to position in variable 'pos'
    delay(45);           // Wait 15 milliseconds for the servo to reach the position
  }
  delay (500);
  // Move from 135 to 30 degrees
  for (int pos = 135; pos >= 30; pos -= 1) {
    myServo.write(pos);  // Tell servo to go to position in variable 'pos'
    delay(45);           // Wait 15 milliseconds for the servo to reach the position
  }
   delay (500);
}

Troubleshooting

In my naievete I thought that the Arduino nano would be able to power this whole project.  However, the little servo apparently draws too much power to run continuously causing the nano to reset itself and creates some erattic animation.

I tried to mitigate this by adding increasing the dealy to 45 thereby slowing down the move, but sadly this was not enough.  It would have been nice to know all this from the start as an alternative board such as an ESP32.  

Anyway that is another story.  In the meantime check out the final result

Download the Files

I have also uploaded the Okey Dokey Sign STL files to Thingiverse if you should want to make your own version of this iconic comic book sign.

Let me know if you found this useful or if you have made your own animated signs for your own games

Boardgame Rescue: Waage Mut

One of the joys of being a boardgame collector is finding one of those long out of print games that only about 20 people admit to owning on BGG.

Waage Mut - Schmidt Spiele (1982)

I picked this up on one of my regular thrift shop trips for the princely sum of £2.  Clearly this was some sort of manual dexterity / balancing game which is usually enough to make me run for the hills, "I'm looking at you Bausack!!"

However, the cover photo featuring a five armed plastic balancing spider intrigued me so it came home.

Google lens translates the box cover as - "LIBRA COURAGE - Anyone who doesn't weigh things up and bets wrong. blurs the victory".

An Incomplete Game

The risk of buying any game in a charity shop is that it comes with missing pieces.  For a common game such as cluedo or monopoly this presents no problem as the pieces are readily available.  However, the older and rarer a game gets the more difficult it becomes to acquire replacement parts.

This is where the 3D printer shines and so I quickly knocked up a replacement blue pawn in Sketchup

If you are missing a pawn you can download a free STL file from:

1. Thingiverse - Thing 6773663
   
2. Cults 3D - Waage Mut Replacement Pawn
   
3. Printables - Waage Mut Replacement Pawn
   

Of course having the abilitle to churn out replacement pieces means it is a trivial exercise to print out a whole 5th player set of pawns.

The Rules (English Translation) 

Sadly the game does not come with rules in English and so Google Lens came to the rescue.  I will be giving this to me my German friend Jonas who can do a proper translation.

LIBRA COURAGE

For 2 to 4 players ages 4 and up, fun for the whole family.

 

The weights must be cleverly distributed in order to achieve as many points as possible without the star. to cause it to tip over. Who doesn't weigh up and. If you put it wrong, you lose your victory.

Preparation:

 

The arms are attached to the center piece and the resulting star is inserted into the stand. Each arm has 6 holes marked 1 (center of star) to 6 (outermost edge).

Gameplay:

Each player receives 6 weights of one color (if there are only 2 players, each player receives 12 weights).

 

A weight is alternately inserted into each hole. If the weight causes the star to tip over, it is removed from the game and may no longer be used.

 

Weights can also be "caught" by placing your own on them. This is an advantage, especially with weights with high points (in holes 5 or 6).

 

The game round ends when all players have set their weights. Each game consists of as many rounds as there are players, so that everyone has the advantage of placing the last weight.

Evaluation:

Each weight is evaluated based on the score of the respective hole. If several weights are stuck in a hole (they have been “caught”), all points are added together and they are credited to the player with the highest weight. 

 

Whoever was able to collect the most points won.

More Photos

 

A Potential Roleplaying Puzzle?

Imagine a scenario where each player enters a large chamber at a different arm of the balancing beam.  Looking down they see only darkness.  Their goal is on the center pedestal, they must combine their movement to ensure that the beam stays balanced and they can get to the center.

 

When they fall do they fall to their deaths or just disappear into the darkness?

To add some peril have some wandering creatures like spiders move onto each of the arms.

Courtisans - A Medieval Take on Happy Families

My work colleague Stephen (Tik Tok Games) returned from UK Games Expo with this exquisitely produced card game.  I loved it so much I immediately bought it.

Courtisans by Catchup Games (distributed by Hacehette)

A new arrival on the board game scene are Hachette Board Games UK a new division of the all dominating French publishing giant Hahcette.  They have collaborated with a number of smaller games designers to distribute their games just in time for Christmas.

One such title is Courtisans by Catchup Games, a simple card collecting in the style of Happy Families except that in addition to keeping and giving away cards you get to try to influence who is in or out of favour at the Queens banquet.

 

High Production Quality  

As soon as you open the box your eye will be drawn to the tapestry play mat.  Something I've never seen in a game and it is so "on theme" I'm tempted to try something similar for my 2nd favourite card game Citadels.

The playing cards are similarly gorgeous.  It is not often that you see tarot sized cards in a boardgame and this again harks back to medieval times when this was the standard size for all cards.  Printed with a gold spot colour these are beautifully illustrated and the necessary symbols discrete yet clear.

Fast Game Play

The objective is simple, collect as many cards of families who are Esteemed, avoid collecting cards of families who are Fallen from Grace and play cards at the Queens table to influence who is Esteemed and who is Fallen from Grace.  Whichever side of the table has the most cards (Esteemed on top, Fallen below) determines which families in everyone's tableau score positive or negative points.

Every turn you keep a card, give one away to another player and add one to the table.  It is that simple.  However, there are four special card types (for each family) which if you draw them can be played and mix things up.  These are:

• Assassin - denoted by the dagger symbol can be used to kill any card from any family whether they are played in your or another players tableau or at the queens table.
  
  
• Guard - denoted by the shield, the guard cannot be killed by an assassin.
  
  
• Noble  - denoted by the Crown X2 means that they are worth two points instead of one.
  
  
• Spy - denoted by the mask symbol is played face down and only revealed at the end of the game.  They can count towards your positive or negative points or can add to the esteemed or fallen from grace scores at the queens table.

Finally a range of secret mission cards can tip the balance in the end game should you be able to satisfy the win condition.

In Conclusion

Courtesans is a great little 5 player game which is quick to play and can easily fill that dead time whilst you are waiting for players to turn up to your RPG game.  I personally love the intrigue element and there are lots of tactics you can deploy to try to seal your victory at a cost to other players.

Mystery Dice Goblin - 7pc D&D Dice Sets

"You can never have enough dice" and when Mystery Dice Goblin reached out and asked me to review their dice bags I jumped at the chance.

Retailing at a very reasonable £4.50 per set with free shipping these blind bags are an excellent choice for birthdays or to give as Xmas Gifts.  Lets open those sealed bags and see what we got.

Set 1 - Green / White Marble

This is a pretty solid starter set, although my particular preference is for solid or gem dice they certainly stand out in a crowded dice bag.  The consistency of the marbling is 50/50 as some dice seemed to get much more of the green juice on one side than others.  The choice of gold number ink is great on the heavy green sides but leans to illegibility in places just purely due to the randomness of the marbling.

Set 2 - Red Arcane 

This set appears to be slightly larger than the other two and they are quite pretty.  A good choice if you are playing a horror inspired RPG like Ravenloft or Call of Cthulhu.  The numbers are well positioned and sufficiently unobscured by the "runes" which feature on every side.

Gold and red are a classic combo and lead to highly legible dice.

Set 3 - Blue and Gold Sparkly Dice

Finally we get to my favourite set which are a blue gem style dice with yellow gold sparkles.  These pop right out of the box and I really like the "blackletter" style numbers inked in white.  Highly legible from every angle these will certainly get some table time in my next game.

Bonus Gift - D&D Enamel Mystery Pin - £5.50

Whilst the Mystery Goblin's are clearly cornering the market with blind bag random number generators, it's not their only offering.  They treated me to one of their enamel pins in the shape of the D&D Logo.

Measuring 30mm across it is tastefully decorated in Red and Blank enamel.  The reverse has a single pin and clasp.  I am pleased to report that the clasp is high quality with some sort of ruberised inside and so it should not fall off easily.  Cheaper versions always seem to fail spectacularly so it's really good to see that some time and effort when into the choice of clasp here.

Even More Accessories Online

As I mentioned earlier, where Mystery Dice Goblin excels is in their wide range of gift sets perfect for every occasion and every gamer.  My particular favourite is the Party Box of Holding which if I were 40 years younger would have been the perfect Xmas gift from one of my aunt's.  

Chock full of dice, stickers, pins, item cards and a fresh character sheet, who wouldn't want one of those in your stocking.  Heck, I should start dropping hints now as Secret Santa is fast approaching approaching.