Its taken much longer than I anticipated but I finally got the bookshelf done. It drug on and on, which is why I didn’t update last week. It felt like if I showed the progress then, it wouldn’t be all that interesting to see it done. So here it is, finally finished with the exception of one touch up I forgot to take care of before taking some photos.
With how long this one took, I can’t say that I’m fired up to paint another but I will have to get a second one done eventually. I now have a piece of Kromlech terrain painted for each terrain size in-game and while there’s more that I need to paint, I can probably try and play Hellboy again with the new terrain soon. I also feel comfortable starting to work on the “moving diorama” I’ve referenced in the past so at some point soon, I’ll try and get going on that. Before I change gears and talk about other things, here is a photo I took using a Hellboy mini to show the scale of the bookshelf. I think they work pretty well together and the bookshelf makes for an attractive piece of background scenery too.
When I haven’t been painting, I did manage to get another game of Arkham in. I purchased some more sleeves so that I could start playing some of the Dead of Night expansion with the base game of Arkham Horror: Third Edition. I played the one scenario that I have yet to beat in four or five tries now, Echoes of the Deep which features Mr. Cthulhu.
I mixed in the encounter cards from Dead of Night (to help solve some repetition in the base game) and tried out two new investigators: Roland Banks and Kate Winthrop. Roland Banks is pretty interesting in that he can spawn extra clues instead of gaining remnants which makes getting clues quite a bit easier. It also can make him more powerful in combat with this unique investigator ability. Kate is very good at getting and research clues so I thought the two would make a strong team.
And they did, for the most part. I managed to destroy two of four possible barriers (which in turn weaken Cthulhu and make him more feasible to kill) and landed six damage on the big green boy as well. If I remember correctly, he only had four hit points left when I lost. If I had gotten a little more lucky, I might have finally won but alas, Cthulhu reigns supreme yet again. Overall, I thought the expansion material that I used, the encounter cards and two of the new investigators, made a positive impact on what is a very difficult scenario. I had some pretty good luck and got strong items at a couple of points but I still couldn’t quite manage a win. At least I’m getting closer and closer to victory. My plan is to get some more sleeves and try out the new Dead of Night scenarios next. I can also see that I really need to get some kind of organizer as the cards are overflowing and its taking longer to setup a game now than before so that is something I will try to work on when I can squeeze it into my budget.
Finally, I’ll talk about something that I rarely discuss and that is sports. I can’t say that I was expecting it but World Cup fever has hit Chateau Kuribo in a big way. I used to be quite the soccer/football fan until I got a full-time job. After that, my freetime was compressed and so I stopped watching soccer for the most part because something had to give. I would watch the Premier League and was a Man City fan before they got really good when Pep Guardiola took over management duties. I’m also unsurprisingly a fan of Team USA in the World Cup. I have to admit though, recently I have felt jaded about our team and wondering if we’d ever be great. We got Jurgen Klinsmann, who was a great manager, (and its awesome that he still seems to support our team despite him being German) and we’ve had great players in the past but we’ve never had a mix of great talent and coaching all at once. Team USA won through heart and hard work and not a high level of talent. It would also be painfully obvious that we couldn’t beat teams like Germany, Spain, and France because they were on another level talent-wise.
Its too early to tell but so far, Team USA looks like they do have the talent to go somewhere this year. They’ve been really impressive against Paraguay and Australia by controlling the ball for most of the game and scoring goals at an impressive clip. I’ve never seen us do those things this well and I have hope that we might actually get somewhere in the tournament. Hiring a good, proven manager, instead of using American coaches who lack experience and pedigree was the right move and while the greed of FIFA is a real bummer with the beautiful game at the moment, its nice to see Team USA finally look like they’re going to do something. Truthfully, we’re also extremely lucky to be playing games at home as I would imagine quite a few people around the world would enjoy rooting against us thanks to our President.
Even my wife is into this year’s World Cup and she does not care about sports at all. Her home country, is competing for the first time in 50 years and they had a torrid time in the 1970’s to say the least. They didn’t score a goal and lost every game convincingly. Congo has made its citizens proud thus far with a well-earned draw against Portugal and it would be great to see them in the knockout rounds as well. It would certainly make many Congolese proud in a way they deserve and rarely achieve on the world’s stage.
While I was planning on talking about a new miniature I purchased, which will be a bit of a surprise, it hasn’t turned up yet, so I will save it for next week. I look forward to discussing that and I will probably do something a bit different painting wise this week as I’m ready to mix things up after working on that bookshelf for so long.
Kuribo's Painting 