Diesel DM

Broken Egg Games Destiny Tokens

Broken Egg Games recently released a Destiny Token Set: acrylic, double-sided tokens to replace the cardboard versions you get in the Destiny starter decks. These tokens cost $25+S/H for a set of 35. The cardboard tokens are more like generic symbols or icons representing their meaning and the Broken Egg versions usual more realistic artwork.  So you lose the immediate iconography connection between the symbols on the dice and cards, but once you’ve played a few times you know what each one means. The images are very sharp and the colors are overall bright and pleasing. The obvious benefit is that acrylic is more durable than cardboard, another is that the starter decks are still hard to find. While usually someone at your local store will have an extra sheet or two of tokens they can part with, it may be that you don’t have tokens at all. (more…)

Shifter Monk-Ranger

For a new D&D 4E campaign I am playing a Shifter who is a Hybrid Monk/Ranger.  Aside from making life difficult on myself by pulling material from all three PHBs, I also needed to find a miniature that would fit that description.  I scoured the internet until I stumbled across Dark Sword Miniatures.  They have a massive selection of miniatures, so massive I wouldn’t stand a chance of just browsing through and finding just what I needed.  Thankfully they have have Miniature Finder that allows you to specify things like race, gender, weapons, etc.  I quickly narrowed down my options and found Male Ranger with Sword/Wineskin Options (DSM7403).  Perfect! (more…)

ASP Saber on Stand

A departure from the usual miniature table-top gaming to talk about a package that arrived today: My ASP lightsaber. I kickstarted this about a year ago and they have very slowly been delivering sabers, much to the chagrin of the nearly 2000 backers who have been waiting since the original expected date of November, 2015.

After the Kickstarter ended we were given access to a virtual saber builder to be able to visually design our sabers.  Here’s what I designed:

http://www.saberparts.com/#/configure?code=4.124.1.0-3.88.1.26-2.52.1.0-1.12.1.0-7.152.15.0-6.150.3.0-5.143.0.0-8.154.0.0

Oregon to New York in three days

Contents

• Blade
• Stand (Ziplock bag)
• Lightsaber (Blue taped bundle)
• Electronics, shims and Battery (lower right white bag)
• Battery, belt clip, allen wrench (middle white bag)
• 3 posters of cosplay lightsaber folks

So right to the main attraction the lightsaber hilt:

Pre-assembled hilt, empty

It turned out just like the virtual saber build above, except of the addition of the belt clip knob at the bottom below the grip.  The grip is made of brown leather, which is quite nice.  I was torn between a leather grip and a standard metal one.  Since they are all made out of interchangeable parts, I can always order a metal handle in the future.

Hilt Breakdown

The typical ASP hilt breaks down into four pieces: handle, emitter, switch and pommel (clockwise starting from top).

Bag #1

Here is the battery charger, belt clip and an allen wrench used to tighten the set screws that hold the blade or blade-plug and the LED emitter.

Bag #2

The shims on the left are used between threaded sections to get the rotation alignment you want.  As with other backers, I wished they’d sent more shims, but I got it pretty close.

Electronics

Inside the electronics bag is a large battery (not pictured above), an LED emitter (upper right), the switch (bottom right), switch hole plug (bottom left) and the battery-holder with main electronic board and speaker on the upper left.

Wired Up

Here’s how the electronics plug together: the longer red/black wires go to the LED emitter while the shorter blue/black wires go to the switch.  The battery fits tightly in the holder with a piece of velcro to hold it in.  The bottom of the battery holder is a speaker, so be gentle when handling it to prevent rupturing it.  (Note that I assembled it externally just to make sure it all worked, to actually assemble the saber you have to take it apart again first)  Also, the speaker is very loud when it’s not in the hilt, I started myself when I accidentally hit the switch.

Off

On

The saber is very bright and the speaker is still quite loud in the hilt.

I still have to install the switch plug, but I think I may move the switch button to the bottom hole to make it easier to get at.  Pushing it once turns it on. Pushing it again makes a blaster deflection sound. Push and hold to turn the saber off.

Masons – Harmony

The last of the Mason’s starter set is kid-sister Harmony.  This is my least-favorite sculpt of those I’ve assembled.  I’m not quite clear on what she’s doing, though she has the requisite one foot in the air.  She’s also wielding a small sword, which is unusual for a Mason, with everyone else having more blunt instruments of the hammer and mallet variety. She’s also my least favorite player on the pitch, so I guess it doesn’t matter too much what I think of the sculpt as she won’t see too much table time.

Harmony – Lots of pieces

Harmony comes in 5 pieces, the main body, the head, a scabbard and two arms.  There are all very tiny connection points, so pinning is recommended.

Ugh, that neck

No matter what I did with pinning the head, I couldn’t get a smooth connection to the neck.  Maybe I wasn’t aligning it as the mold maker thought I should, perhaps something was molded incorrectly, I don’t know, but the neck was a mess, so off to the green stuff tube we go.

And the arms as well

The right arm didn’t fit perfectly either, so back for more green stuff to smooth that out.

Masons – Harmony

I followed the same Masons paint scheme as with Honor and  Mallet.  I made her hair more red/orange than the art might suggest, but I liked it. You can see just a bit here that when I went to paint the neck it was clear that between the misalignment and the green stuff, I couldn’t just paint it flesh colored. So I decided she would wear a metal necklace kind of like armor.

And in the photo from the back you can notice a mold line that escaped me running along the back of the armor on her right leg.  All in all this model is a candidate for someday getting another and starting over, but then again I don’t like the sculpt or the rules on her card, so I doubt I will ever do this one over again.