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Kimera Models – Minerva VII

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My apologies for the lack of an update last week. I was somewhere between 66%-75% done with what I’ve been working on and felt like it would just be best to wait and share it when its nearly done. Here’s a look at what I’ve been up to.

If you know your mythology, then you probably already know that Athena has a Gorgon’s Head shield and that is exactly what I’ve been working on. I decided to try out a new color scheme to try and get a nice steel look going, in addition to the nice Gorgon head details already there. I’ve never tried these colors before but I think they look quite nice. It took forever to get those steel colors blended smoothly but I think it was worth the effort in the end. I also went ahead and attached the shield and arm to Minerva which seemed to go smoothly so things are coming together. I’ve still got further to go on this project than I thought/hoped, but we’re making steady progress anyway. I’ll hold off on showing what Minerva looks like with her shield until next week because otherwise, I won’t have much to show off next week either.

Outside of painting, I have been playing a card game that I bought called Skytear Horde. Its a funny name but since the creators are Italian, we’ll give them a pass. I really enjoyed the card game at first, its a lot like Magic: The Gathering but you can play it solo which is a winning concept. While Skytear Horde purports to be a tower defense card game, it is pretty similar to Magic: the Gathering and you have to damage your opponents’ portal and then the boss monster to win the game. Unfortunately, the more I played, the more I noticed that there is too much luck in the game and not enough strategy and skill. This is doubly true for the achievements that come with the game. These should be fun goals or alternative ways to play the game but I found pretty quickly that they actually highlight the game’s main weakness.

Skytear Horde has two ways you can lose the game. Your castle has 20 hit points (just like you have 20 life in Magic) but you can also lose if you run out of cards in your deck and there are particular enemies that will cause you to lose cards over the course of the game, especially if you don’t attack them. While I like the dual elements to consider as you play, the discarding of cards creates a gameplay problem. You may have cards that you really need or want to play that get discarded and the problem is that there are really aren’t any ways to control what you draw. This means you’re really relying upon luck, especially if an achievement says, you need to win by playing a combination of 2-4 cards. Skytear has no cards that let you search through your deck and grab the particular card you need which I think is a mistake. If a card gets discarded for any reason, there are a small number of cards that will let you add it to your deck but it goes on the bottom so that does you no good. You need to play another card to shuffle your deck and then get lucky enough to draw it. I think you can start to see where that is not ideal and highlights a weakness in the game.

There is an expansion coming out and they might be able to solve the weaknesses of the game and make it more fun. Most card games benefit from a larger card pool and right now some of the deck colors are noticeably less powerful than others. I have no idea if any of this is being addressed in the new expansion. I’m going to hang onto SkyTear Horde for now and see what people say about the expansion later this year. I got around 10 hours of fun gameplay out of it which is fair for $50. Funnily enough, the game is best played by avoiding the achievements altogether as they’re likely to cause you some aggravation and make you fall out of love with the game, like they did for me.

I also think my experiences with this game highlight how tricky it is to get solo-friendly card games right. Ideally, you need to have multiple decks that are equal in power and are fun to play (because otherwise, why not just play the best one all the time?). You also need to have a difficulty setting for different types of players which is not easy to achieve either. If a game is too hard, it basically forces you to use those “power” decks all the time instead of trying out different strategies. Arkham Horror did not suffer from these issues in my opinion and that is why I hold it in such high regard.

26 thoughts on “Kimera Models – Minerva VII”

  2. The shield is super nice. I’m not sure/didnt realize how it was steel. That’s the main bluish/greenish part on the front? The blend is amazing. I also really like that gold. Beautifully done!

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    1. Thank you, Brian! I did some internet research and I suppose it could actually be silver and not steel. Most silver doesn’t look like this but there might be some that has the bluish/greenish tint. I do know that the color scheme came from the steel/silver section so it must be one or the other 🙂

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  3. Awesome subtle blends on the shield mate, and detailing on the Gorgon, so nice to see someone use this term, instead of the character ! LOL
    Sounds a shame on the card game, and hope the expansion corrects some of the problems for you.

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    1. Thank you! It was a chance to really put my interest in Ancients to work 🙂 And truthfully, there is not almost any board, card, or wargames that are one and done. Expansions are par for the course and yet, we still eat them up!

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      2. A decent amount of DLC in video games is skippable (in my opinion anyway) but with a lot of board and card games, expansions are nearly essential, especially because of Kickstarter. Bigger is better with Kickstarter and more miniatures, content, and expansions are par for the course there too.

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    1. Thank you, mate! Magic: The Gathering is definitely the king of card games in terms of market share. It is fun, though it is made with tournaments in mind not unlike Warhammer. I’m sure that’s helped it sustain its popularity over the last 30 years.

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    1. It took about two weeks I would estimate 20-24 hours. The bulk of that time was spent getting the steel looking good. Those kind of blends take a lot of patience 🙂

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