I have several things to show off since its technically been two weeks since normal update though most of it is fairly small. The first thing I tackled is the second Nazi Knife Fighter from Hellboy. The first of many Nazis I have yet to paint. There’s not too much to say about it so I’ll just share some pictures, including a side-by-side that shows the first one on the left and newer one on the right. There are some subtle differences between the two but the only intentional one is that I decided to try and mix up the skin tones a bit across the various Nazis to try and make it interesting for myself. We’ll see if that makes a visual impact in the end or not.
Next up, we have something very small and a little tedious to work on: a pile of books. This is the first of four or five I plan on painting for Hellboy. I probably only need to finish 2-3 but I’ll do them all because I think they’ll look nice all together. The details on this one are tricky because they’re annoyingly small so I did the best I could. Working on this took longer and was less fun than I expected. I decided to change gears after painting this one but more on that in a second. Finally, I should mention that the odd thing with my camera where something truly tiny (28mm miniatures and below) comes out looking dark and kind of bland. You can really see this in the third picture below which was meant to be a scale comparison but ends up being a much better photo than the other two.
Saving the best for last, I also painted up a chair that goes with the Wizard’s desk from a couple of weeks ago. This was pretty enjoyable to paint and not overly time consuming. I always enjoy painting red and so that didn’t hurt matters any. I’ll hold off showing what it looks like with the desk as I want to wow you when you see the “moving diorama” or cinematic photo I have planned for Hellboy in the future when I get more of this done.
Since I finished the bookpile and chair, I finally rediscovered my motivation for display painting so I’m back to working on Lokaris now. It has been quite a bit since I really had any desire to resume working on the 75mm project but something clicked for me and I’ve been much more motivated to work on it the last couple of days. I made some nice improvements and even attached a new limb to him so I’m looking forward to showing some progress on him next week.
This week, I took a day off of work as a day of relaxation, with an eye towards playing Arkham Horror: Third Edition and trying the final scenario, Echoes of the Deep. And while I did play it that day, I mostly got crushed. The first time I got myself in a terrible position pretty early on because I kept flubbing dice rolls. In addition to some nasty fish creatures trailing my every step, I somehow managed to let three anomalies open up. That is about as dire as it gets and I was convinced there was no way to win so I threw in the towel. Here’s a quick picture of the board state before I stopped.
The second time I rolled dice better but realized I made several rules mistakes. I also took Rex Murphy and I really don’t like him as an investigator in Third Edition. He has an ability where he can only count 6’s instead of 5’s and 6’s as successes which is a big deal and he often misses key rolls because you just can’t get a 6 when you need it. In fact, I find him underwhelming compared to other clue getters in this game and I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t use him again anytime soon. So I once again conceded to the mighty Cthulhu.
The third time I played through the whole scenario (for the first time finally!) and lost soundly again, unfortunately. The Echoes of the Deep scenario throws harder monsters at you than any of the previous do. There are potentially two Elite monsters on the board that damage your sanity each turn, unless you fight them and then they do even more damage. Its a lot to contend with. To make matters worse, I did not do a good job of keeping anomalies from lingering which causes doom to pile up on the scenario sheet and you to lose the scenario. So while I tried to make my investigators more combat-centered this time, it just didn’t work out.
Like a rabid Cthulhu follower, I actually got a 4th game in on Friday and I used what I think are the strongest investigators in the base game (Calvin Wright, Wendy Adams, and Marie Lambeau). Calvin and Wendy are very durable and pretty versatile compared to many other investigators that only do one thing really well. I’d never used Marie before and she lets you both repeat an action and provides a third action to herself or someone else, which is really powerful. She is easily the best “support” investigator in the base game, I’d wager!
I also tried to tweak my strategy slightly and really focus on preventing doom from hitting the scenario sheet (you will always lose Arkham Horror: Third Edition if it advances too high) by warding more and closing anomalies as quickly as possible. This did wonders for my overall performance and I even killed the first big monster that hits the board (who more or less “clears the way” for Cthulhu) but I wasn’t able to weaken the Cthulhu much before running out of time and was not close to being able to kill it with Calvin. I had a few tough breaks like when Marie suddenly died by being thrown onto train tracks by a stranger (!) and then losing Blessed on Calvin which makes him much more formidable in combat than he is without it.
So Cthulhu has beat me up a few times this week and I’m finding the scenario very difficult to beat using the Base Game only. I suspect that it might be easier if I add some more investigators from the next expansion into the mix but I want to write my review of Arkham Horror: Third Edition Base Game first. So expect that in the coming weeks as I get time. It will be a long article and so if you have no interest in the game, please don’t feel any pressure to read or comment upon it.
Finally, I’ve been working my way through some Arkham Horror inspired reading this week as well and I will launch a new kind of article called “Reading Arkham Horror” in the near future. If you like Lovecraft or the board/card games, then my hope is that you will find it interesting. There isn’t a ton of informative articles out there about Mythos writers so I figured it’d be fun to talk a bit about what I’ve been reading in case it might be of interest to some of you. I can’t say for sure when I’ll be able to finish the article so hopefully it will be a nice surprise when it does show up in your feed.
Kuribo's Painting 
Excellent work on the Nazi (not a phrase I thought I’d be using today ! LOL) and the books and chair, I look forward to the moving diorama when it’s all done. great to hear your motivation for your display piece has returned, and look forward to seeing the progress.
Sounds like Cthullu has been giving you a few problems this week, hardly surprising being a god in effect ! LOL
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It is funny to be blogging anything about the Nazis in today’s day and age but in Hellboy, they are omnipresent in many ways! Thanks for the kind words on the painting and glad to hear you’re interested in seeing what’s to come as well.
You would think between Fallout and Arkham, that I’d be a bit of expert on saving the world before or after the apocalypse but it turns out that I may not be so great at it after all haha!
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While the painting is excellent as ever, I’m really here for the Arkham update 🤣 Great work on getting so many games in, I’m really envious of you there!! I think I’ve only played Echoes of the Deep once, and looking at my stats on boardgamegeek, it was with additional content from the small expansion… that said, I still lost at least one investigator to the rising tides of insanity! It’s such a good game though, I’m looking forward to reading your review. And I’m also looking forward to your blog series to come!!
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Haha! I was writing almost to you because you’re one of the only other big Arkham fans in the blogging community who is active right now 🙂 I really only played twice since two of the games didn’t last super long but yes, I played too much Arkham this week for sure. Echoes of the Deep is tough and challenges you in a different way than Azathoth does so kudos to the designers for that. I look forward to trying it with some different investigators to see if that helps me out any. I’m hoping so! I will do my best to get those articles written up sooner than later, if I can. It helps to know that at least one person out there is excited for them too!
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😃 I’m honoured!! I do love reading your Arkham stuff, it’s definitely getting me back in the mood for playing it. I’ve also been thinking some more about the LCG… that Innsmouth look strikes again!!
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The Innsmouth Look is also known as the Asmodee Look in some corners haha! I’m glad to hear it and I’m afraid we’re inspiring each other at this point, which since it involves Lovecraft, can only mean one of the Elder Gods is finally going to break through! 😉
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🤫 Don’t say that, we can’t jeopardise the Asmodee sponsorship deal 😃
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Haha!
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Nice work on the minis, Jeff! 🙂 I must admit, my favourites are the books!
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That’s good to hear because there are bigger stacks of books yet to be painted! 🙂
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Nice work on those models! Good to see the Hellboy collection growing, keen to see what you mean by moving diorama/cinematic picture!
Glad to hear the change of painting type got you inspired again for 75mm, there’s a real value to changing things up if a type of painting isn’t working for you for a bit!
Interesting to hear your experience playing Arkham Horror, I think I played an older version (maybe first?) it had a full board rather than the tiles. I remember the game being hard!
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Thanks, Nic! I haven’t decided how far I’m going to go on the “moving diorama” yet (I need to decide if I want to make some flooring and a wall for a background or not but it will definitely be a cinematic picture, as best as I can come up with!
I was a bit worried that I had lost my enthusiasm for the 75mm miniature since it has been a fair amount of time since I last worked on it but thankfully that is not the case. I agree that mixing things up is always a good idea. The longer I’m in the hobby, the more I do that to keep things fresh and my enthusiasm high.
I think you played Second Edition, because the First Edition is quite old now and a bit different than what you describe. The version you played is beloved by many! Having said that, part of the difficulty is learning what kinds of things can happen at the different spaces which you learn by practice. That is one thing Third Edition makes a bit easier. With that said, either version of Arkham Horror is a lot of fun 🙂
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It’s a bit of a can’t do everything but you sure need to do something situation isn’t it! I’ve played a lot more of Elder Sign, which is a relatively regular play for us. It packs down very small so I’ve taken it travelling too which is a nice thing to be able to do with a board game! It’s got a similar everything is on fire feel to it but in a much smaller scope.
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It certainly is! Elder Sign has its fans but it isn’t talked about online nearly as much as the other Arkham Horror games for some reason. It came out at a time where FFG made tons of expansions so its well supported though which is great. I might have to look into the game and see if its one I should play 🙂
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I like it, but it might be too similar to Arkham Horror for you. Does play much faster though so some value there for sure.
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Yes, I think that is definitely valuable as Third Edition is longer than I would like. I have definitely been debating more Arkham gaming in my future so we’ll see where I end up.
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If you do look at elder sign there is one expansion that is pretty much a requirement if you find you enjoy the game and want to keep playing it: Unseen Forces. It adds some really good changes to the base game and sort of fixes the difficulty level, there are some tactics that are very overpowered in the base game. No need for it tif you’re just trying the game out though!
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I’ve only done a quick check of Amazon and that is the only expansion available for Elder Sign currently in the US. I was a little surprised by that so I’ll have to do some more digging to see if its still in print or not after all!
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Looking forward to seeing the diorama! You can paint the na..’s as long as they get they lose in the game 🙂
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Haha, the nazis are definitely meant to lose though even Hellboy has his bad days, I would say! I look forward to it as well. As I just mentioned to Nic, I’ll have to decide how far I’m going to go with it as I could do a couple more pieces of terrain and call it a day or I can take a few steps further. We’ll see what I’m in the mood to tackle soon enough.
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Lovely painting on the second knife-fighter there, though I’m not sure I can tell the difference in skin tone from the side-by-side picture. And I continue to be impressed with the little bits of wizard furntiure you’re working on. Whenever we see the full room for this wizard it’ll look amazing!
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It is pretty subtle. I hope that you’ll see some difference when I get them all done but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m not quite so sure! Glad you like the furniture too. There’s plenty more of that to come for better and worse!
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