Miscellaneous Winter War pics

My brother-in-law Jim and another player (is that Greg?) examine one of the maps in the Blind Sniper room. In the foreground is Jim's son Ian. As I mentioned before he and I crippled each other on round 2 of the game. The fella in the red plaid shirt is Alfred, who won the all-new, all-crazy Board Gamer Agonistes award. Each boardgame ran at the convention was worth a number of points based on total players at the table. The winner got a bunch of those points and other people got some points at the ref's discretion. Al came out with the highest total, though my sister apparently did pretty darn good as well.



My Encounter Critical players. From the left that's Josh, Kathleen, and Doug. They've played in several con games of mine over the years. Our tastes intersect enough to create some magnificently fun one-shots, but I sometimes suspect that we'd drive each other crazy in a lengthy campaign. They'd be busy telling some sort of anime-based storyline and I'd be trying to fight every NPC encountered. Across the table from this terrific trio is Marc, Dave Hoover's son. We all had a lot of fun together.

After buying a bulletproof vest and shield, Josh modified his character illo. Not pictured: the rollerskates he swiped off of a one-eyed mutant midget.

Here's my ten-player D&D freak-out. Josh, Kathleen, and Doug are a little more crowded together in this shot! Everyone is working on characters here. For most events I love making my own pregens, but a nostalgia powered game like this demands random chargen at the event.


One of the vendors, Thompson Productions, had a painting demo table. They had a selection of Reaper brand figures and paints. I painted these two guys. Even with the limited time and selection of colors I thought they turned out better than I expected. This really gave me the boost of confidence I've needed to take minis painting more seriously. And working on the archer's chainmail made me a believer in drybrushing. The pic is terrible, that actual figures don't look very good (the sculpts are nifty, the paint job is terrible), but up close that chainmail looks awesome. All thanks to a simple drybrush of silvery steel over a black base. I'm definitely going to paint some more figures after this experience.

Finally, here's some links to pictures of the monsters I made for the Friday night Clay-O-Rama game.

Klaggor, the Thing from Beyond the Stars!
Mr. Maw
The Stinging Vampiric Two-Faced Snake-Weasel
Little Arty, the Littlest Artillery Piece

Hey kids!

I used Heromachine to put together some black & white illos of various members of Darth Viraxis's Mutant Legion. I brought along a bag of crayons so the players and I could color them. This first one was done by Marc.

Kathleen colored in this one. Unfortunately the sparkly effect of the metallic crayons did not scan well. Trust me, those boots are very shiny. My daughter helped me design this mutant, by the way. She insisted on both the butterfly wings and the hair that is fire.

Kathleen's husband Josh coloered this dude. I like how he emphasized the tradeable limbs.

This bearded lady, colored by Doug, was the first victim of Hansel Manho's charms.

By yours truly.

I am totally going to repeat this ecperiment. A little dose of Encounter Critical brought out the fun-lovin' kid in everyone at the table.

The Hulk is a friggin' racist

In issue 2 of the original Defenders our heroes are in the Himalayas all of three panels when the Hulk starts breaking this shit out:


So what the hell is going on here? Is this the result of years of being constantly reminded of his (freakish) green skin? Is Bruce Banner a closet racist, and what we see here is the Hulk as Banner's unmitigated id? Is writer Steve Englehart off his rocker?

Fathoming this whole situation is complicated all the more by the odd coloring Asians could end up back in the day.

worth the sucky formatting

Your results:
You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor 69% Dr. Doom 69% Two-Face 57% Magneto 55% Mr. Freeze 55% Apocalypse 54% Juggernaut 53% Dark Phoenix 49% Poison Ivy 48% Kingpin 48% Green Goblin 45% Venom 43% The Joker 41% Mystique 41% Catwoman 34% Riddler 27%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Winter War 34 in review

Ten Things I Liked About This Weekend

1. I had a great time chatting with a lot of great people that I don't game with during the course of the year.


2. My old school D&D game was a lot of fun. Managing ten players went fairly smoothly, except for the one kid who wanted to stab a wizard who had a cyclops friend. I had a blast running this module.


3. I played Clay-O-Rama, the super-silly game of Playdoh-based carnage. More on that when I can show you pictures.


4. The Encounter Critical game was superfun. Mutants were propositioned. There was a quantumly indeterminate Warlock's Pit containing a substance such as crocodiles and/or sharks & lions. Blink Beasts pulled people off of dewbacks. And Darth Viraxis was put out of our misery. The players are already jazzed up for next year's adventure "Obiwan Shinobi in the Wilden West".


5. I didn't go crazy shopping. I found a 3.5 monster book for 75% off, some dollar bin old gaming crap, and a couple minis, including this thing:


6. Pat and I snuck away long enough to make a run for the local comic shop. In the 50 cent boxes I found some Avengers: United They Stand and the one issue of Legionnaires that I've been wanting. And some more Sensational She-Hulk.


7. Don returned my copy of Starter Traveller, which he had borrowed for grognardy research purposes. Thanks, Don! He also gave me some helpful ideas for maybe attempting a new superhero campaign. Don is solid awesomite.


8. My sister was able to attend. Some of her games went less-than-swimmingly, but I think she still had a good time overall.


9. I was able to leave early Saturday night. (See item 4 on the next list.) For those of you who were making fun of me for not being hardcore, I would like to direct your attention to this.


10. The Catpissman Ratio was way down from last year as far as I could tell.

Five Things I Didn't Like About This Weekend

1. No one signed up for my Mazes & Minotaurs game. I put quite a bit of work into that adventure. I think my pitch in the con program book was a bit bland. And mythic Greece isn't exactly a redhot genre.


2. My daughter was out of town. She was having a good time with the grandparents, but I still missed her.


3. I didn't get as much time as I would have liked to chat with everyone.


4. My nephew and I crippled each other with point blank shots on turn 2 of the Blind Sniper tournament. Better luck next year, Ian!


5. I was hoping to score a copy of Dungeon Crawl #4, Bloody Jack's Gold, but none of the vendors had it in stock.

Con games can be weird.

Winter War, my local con, is officially underway today. I expected my Sunday morning Encounter Critical game to be full up by this point. It was a big hit last year. But my Sunday afternoon D&D Basic game ('81 rules, of course) has filled as well, and I put down that I would run it for 10 people! That's going to be very interesting. It's been a long time since I last run a game for even 7 players.

Meanwhile, my myth-tastic Mazes & Minotaurs session has yet to get a single player. Still, that's not til tomorrow morning and turnout this year looks like it may break the local record.

JL5K: Other Members

Power Lass was an experiment in how gratuitous I could make a superheroine costume with Heromachine. Answer: pretty damn gratuitous.
Singularity Zero is a mysterious non-human or post-human time traveller from the future (further upstream than the year 5000) with quantum powers. According to the DC One Million timeline the original Singularity (i.e. Singularity I) makes its first appearance further in the future.
Star Lad was an experiment mixing Heromachine and MS Paint to get a starfield effect kinda like the Marvel characters Eternity and Nebulon or that one Donna Troy costume.
Steel of the year 5000 AD actually recovered one of John Henry Irons' original powersuits. I really dig the boots.
Vulcana wields the Black Lightning, an enigmatic energy unknown to the previous centuries.

Dead Lass is known as The Ghost Who Haunts Mars. She looks like a Deadman legacy hero but she's really a cloned white martian that works for J'onn J'onz, who pretty much acts as the Martian Oracle of Year 5000.
This era's Flash is a sentient tachyon field held in a anthropomorphic containment suit. And he can run in outer space.
The current Green Lantern of Sector 2814 is an alien. He is only an associate or honory member of the Justice League because he does most of his work in other systems.
Hawk Lass is a Thanagarian police officer who acts as the League's liason to Interstel, the less-than-completely effectual Interstellar Police. She's got this mystical hammer that returns when she throws it. With the face I was trying to make her intentionally Not Pretty.
Every large superhero team needs a member who sucks so bad he makes the others look good. Katana Lad is that guy.