Kromlech – Wizard’s Workdesk Done

The joke title for this update is IKEA – Idanas Desk Done. But truthfully, it was a bit of a nightmare. For $700, I got a desk that was a pain to assemble, is surprisingly heavy (though I suppose that’s fine) and has a finish that is extremely easy to scratch (which I learned the hard way a couple of times). I bought the thing on Friday and took apart the old one that day. It took most of Saturday and 3-4 more hours on Sunday to finish the new desk. I have to thank Dave Stone for unwittingly teaching me a “skill” in IKEA furniture making. I accidentally broke a piece off and was worried about even finishing the desk at one point. And then I realized I have wood glue and so I used some where the chipboard (or whatever it is) was broken and sure enough, that seemed to work out pretty nicely and made up for the damage I caused. And who says modeling/miniature painting isn’t useful?! Anyway, here’s a look at the new desk and the old desk. The new one has more storage which I’ve already commandeered for some unassembled miniatures. That’s a nice improvement, if nothing else. My room looks slightly (though only slightly!) cleaner so there’s some improvement there too I suppose.

The IKEA desk took up the whole weekend which was pretty deflating but I have been busy hobbying since then. I managed to finish the Wizard’s Workdesk which came out nicely, I must say. The OSL effects are not my best work, but they get the job done and its hard to squeeze them in, in some ways too. Either way, I’m happy to share this desk with you.

This is a big step towards getting the Hellboy terrain done and it also will make for some pretty cool cinematic photos I have planned in the nearish future using Hellboy too. I’ve already started on some other Hellboy stuff so expect to see more, including something to go with this desk in a week’s time.

I got to play Arkham Horror: Third Edition not once but twice since I last updated. So far, I’ve played three of the four scenarios and beaten two of the four. I returned to the one I played but have not beaten which involves Azathoth and it really is a punishing scenario and easily the hardest of the three scenarios. I thought maybe if I used three investigators and delegated an important role to each, that would work pretty well for beating it this time. I had some poor luck, including one investigator taking six damage in one go, but I still came up well short of beating the scenario. Indeed, Azathoth returned and consumed everyone in the past and in the future.

After giving it some more thought, I looked over every investigator closely and looked for two that I thought could work well with this scenario. That ended up being Wendy Adams and Calvin Wright who are both fairly good at some important things. Both have good Lore and Observation which makes them good at getting rid of Doom counters (which will quickly end your game, otherwise) and researching clues. Calvin is also not a bad fighter all things considered which meant I had most of my bases covered.

That actually proved to be the case because I was able to beat Azathoth finally! Hopefully this makes sense to those who have never played Arkham Horror: Third Edition, but there are cards that provide your current goals at any given time in the game and they update when certain things occur. In Azathoth, you end up finding out that something is wrong pretty early on and if you do well enough at getting clues, you find a ritual barrier which you can destroy and then proceed to preventing Azathoth from manifesting and winning the game. The other route, which occurs if you’re less successful, punishes you pretty harshly for not removing the barrier in time. Instead you have to travel beyond time and space and hope to successfully apply clues towards a more formidable Azathoth. Each turn you do this, you take two horror damage while in this alternate realm which sounds pretty punishing. I like that the game gives you two different paths, its very similar to Arkham Horror: The Card Game, though the path I took (which I could only do because I was having a good run during the scenario) made it considerably easier to win. I don’t know if I love that there is a hard path in this already difficult scenario but I was happy to beat it and I feel like I have a much better feel for which investigators are good in the game now, whereas I didn’t previously. There’s no doubt that picking some of the stronger investigators will help mitigate your bad luck and give you an increased chance of banishing Azathoth as well. Cthulhu is my next and last opponent which I look forward to playing in the nearish future. Once I do that, I’ll probably write up a review for the game as I quite enjoy it and it will be a fun exercise for me as well.

So that’s hobbying and gaming out of the way. I have two other topics to touch upon, if you’ll humor me. The first is that I was on Instagram the other day and happened to see that Scibor Miniatures is preparing to sunset some things that I’ve always liked about their “brand”. One is conversion parts, which I totally get. I’m not so sure that their conversion pieces aren’t for pre-Primaris GW sculpts, though I might be wrong on that. What I was sad to hear is that their terrain might be gone in the future. I say might be, because some of it is definitely disappearing to clear the way for new molds but it isn’t clear yet what is, exactly. Scibor has a lot of interesting looking Dwarven pieces such as the following:

There are plenty of others that are nice, I unfortunately don’t have a Dwarven table in the cards, which is a shame as friend of the site, Bret, does own one and it fills me with envy when I see his beautiful work! At the same time, I do really like the look of these Dwarven Stone Heads but not for what you might think.

Is it just me or would this look really nicely in some kind of Conan terrain? There is something a bit ominous about these stone heads which makes me think its perfect for the Barbarian. Perhaps somewhere like Vanaheim or Asgard in the tough, snowy landscapes. Unfortunately, if I want this set, there is merely one for sale in the US currently for a reasonable price (where as the website on Scibor’s site is somehow $50 higher, no joke!) so I might have to try and find room in the budget for some Scibor stuff to stash away for the future. If you’re interested in Scibor’s terrain, it can’t hurt to try and track down what you like before it disappears for good.

And to tie Arkham Horror and Conan neatly into a bow. I’m pretty close to catching up on the last comics in my backlog and I’ve been thinking about things to read that will inspire future gaming fun. I’m reading through the Conan issues last (I generally save the best stuff for last when reading through comics) and I’m looking for ideas for future gaming possibilities as I do. I haven’t quite worked out how I’m going to tackle it but in the future, I’ll be writing about what I’m reading out and talking about potential ideas. That will help me remember ideas that I come across and perhaps it might inspire others to do the same. So there’s more to come on that. My goal is to revisit Conan comics I’ve already read and read the Robert E. Howard stories for the first, if not some of the pastiche novels later on down the line. It will most likely be in that order as I think the comics will probably give the most inspiration considering their visual nature.

I’ve also been inspired to get back to Lovecraft after playing Arkham Horror. I’d love to reread some of his better works again. Its been ten plus years since I first read H.P. so its not exactly fresh in my mind. I’ve also never read any of the works from people other Lovecraft that are used in Arkham Horror. This includes the likes of Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Chambers. So I’ll see if I can’t work some of that into the mix. If I can find the time, I’d like to get back to reading the Arkham Horror novels as well. I enjoyed the first one and fell off of them for some reason. There are tons of books out there now. Probably something like 20-25 so catching up will be a tall task. If I can find a way to turn them into some interesting articles, I will perhaps write about these in the future as well. We’ll have to see what I can accomplish as I’ll still be reading comics as they come out as well. No matter what happens, my hope is to have fun and have some nice escapes from reality, if nothing else. Its nice to have some goals to aspire towards as well.