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B:GCC - Mission 10 "The Postman Always Rings Twice" pits our heroes vs Firefly and Killer Moth. The heroes need to examine the poison and find an antidote for it, but the laboratory is extremely deadly to anyone without a gas mask. Thankfully one is provided. Ok, I'm back from work travels, lets finish up some minis! Batwoman has a great color scheme, but enough with the unbalancing capes already! I like how Azrael's sword came out. I kind of gave up on it but after giving it a red wash it looked much better. I can't say I enjoyed painting his cape either. Between his arms and his cape, there was a lot of blocked plastic. I like Firefly for a number of reasons and I enjoyed painting him. I attempted to get some color in the smoke but I gave up. There's some orange in there but that's about it. Finally, someone who's not red. Killer Moth is typically a gag villain but I guess they made him serious business at some point. I actually kind of like his outfit and while his front logo of a x-shaped teal design over a white-ish design wasn't perfect, I'm glad I tried it.

So I hear Paizo's got this new game, Starfinder, up and coming. And I am not sure what to think. Pathfinder filled a need; I tried 4th Edition D&D, and did not much care for the radical changes after several years of 3.5. Pathfinder was just an extension of the d20 system, and worked well as a generic fantasy game ... that, as splatbook after splatbook and so forth, grew steadily less generic. Still a fine game, although it begins to show signs of splatcreak*, as the sheer amount of rules pile up. Makes sense they'd want to expand their base of gaming; a one-game company is vulnerable to changes in the market, and D&D has finally gotten its head on straight. Time to seek out new life and civilizations... if only to stay competitive. But I dunno. First science fiction RPG I ever played was Traveller, which did an amazing job of distilling the basics down to three little booklets in a box, which seems to be how things were done, then. We had combat, we had spaceships, we had computers, find a ship, find a crew, find a job, keep flying. It worked. (I will not discuss Gamma World or Metamorphosis Alpha; while I enjoyed 'em, these were more postapocalyptic and less space opera, and this is hard enough to keep on track as it is). Another game, Space Opera, was interesting and fun, although waaaay too in love with its rulesset; as I recall, you could burn a whole gaming session just creating a character. Which I guess was a little better than Traveller, where you could accidentally get killed before your character entered PLAY, but Space Opera's extra crunchy rules were a bit much, even for the times. I enjoyed Star Frontiers, once TSR finally got off their duffs and designed a neat space opera setting, although I took it kinda personally that they did not include a starship design or purchase system, or for that matter much of any information about space travel other than "buy a ticket." What, Traveller could do it, but you can't? They were up front enough, though, about the fact that they'd be out with a separate boxed set that would include the starship rules... eventually. And they did. Aaaand that's where we take a sharp left, because Star Frontiers was the last generic science fiction space opera I ever played. FASA quickly came out with a licensed Star Trek game, set during the TOS era, because that's all we had back then; Next Generation was still years away. Still remember the one adventure we played as Klingon officers, who wound up blowing up the ship due to a complex web of backstabbery... but I digress. Not long after that, they also came out with a licensed Doctor Who game, which preoccupied us for a while, as there were a hell of a lot of VHS tapes to track down to keep up with the setting! It did have the advantage of spreading across all TIME, as well as space... although we took a break when West End Games's Star Wars came out, because to a nerd-child of the seventies, the history of mankind breaks down into pre-SW and post-SW. After all, you never saw any Planet Of The Apes RPGs, did you? Hell, I still have a copy of Leading Edge's Aliens RPG around here somewhere; it was fun, albeit rather sketchy, as it was based entirely on the two movies in the Alien franchise as of 1988... had plenty of information about Weyland-Yutani, the Space Marines, the Aliens... and nearly nothing else... Which brings us to now. As I said above, Pathfinder filled a need. But there are a great many licensed science fiction games now. Firefly is still going strong. A new Star Wars game still circulates, albeit unsupported due to licensing. A new Star Trek game is in the works, assuming its maker ever gets it out of playtesting, and the current Doctor Who game still seems to be selling. Is there a place now for a generic science fiction setting? Will it appeal to people who've never tried Pathfinder? Or does the current market favor established licensed science fiction settings where one can watch a movie or three and get an idea INSTANTLY about the world and how it works? Opinions? Ideas? Rants?

If only this fan-made trailer were real... :(

The family decided to make kites for Father's Day at the park. So, after some research I designed a Firefly Sled Kite. Here's a couple of work in progress shots: I will try to get a shot of it flying tomorrow.

I know I should probably finish one of my other projects first before starting a new one, but I don't wanna! I wanna play with Space Cowboys! (Well, technically they're Steampunk Cowboys, but I don't think they look particularly steampunky.) So here are the Magnificent 8:- Top row (left to right):- Sun Totem, Hicks Kincade, Jake Mattia, Marcus Wayward. Botton row (left to right):- Flowing River, Zarelda Kincade, K-Free, Sierra Icarus. And here they are after a coat of White Primer and a brown wash:- I've been trying to get out of the habit of pre-shading my minis (it uses up a Lot of wash), but my poor, old eyes needed help in picking out the fine details on these guys. If you're wondering about the random selection of bases, they're just temps. Originally I was going to make desert bases (The Eight were protecting a frontier settlement in an alien wasteland from Space Bandits), but Wild West Exodus uses their own style of really tall bases, and flipped over they have a really nice recess prefect for using Water Effects, so now the Eight are protecting settlers on a swamp moon from Space Bandits. Hopefully my water stuff won't crack like it did the last time I tried making a swamp base. Didn't get to far with this side of the project, glued the cork and sand in:- But the sand absorbed the IMEF Olive I attempted to paint on it, so I slobbered Black Primer over them all:- And now I'm waiting for everything to dry.

I got this from Google+ and the Firefly community on there. This is the kind of stuff that intrigues me and is at the same time intimidating in what I would have to learn and buy in with. They do metal work, distressing, painting, wiring, lighting, and so much more. Visit the WIP or recap of the project.

A few months back, Iposted a series of figures destined for use as PCs in a Firefly game. We've had a newcomer join the crew, so I had to paint up a mini for her. She fits in the same constraints as the previous set: White, Black and Oxblood Red, plus browns. Fairly muted bunch, for the most part. I'm pleased with this paintjob, mostly because it happened in less than 6 hours of work. I can paint quickly! If you're interested, the other Firefly PCs are here. C&C always welcome!